
Book J5l^ 

GopightN" 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE FUNDAMENTAL 
FALLACY OF SOCIALISM 



AN EXPOSITION OF THE QUESTION 
OF LANDOWNERSHIP 



COMPRISING AN AUTHENTIC ACCOUNT 
OF THE FAMOUS McGLYNN CASE 



EDITED BY 

ARTHUR PREUSS 

EDITOR OF THE CATHOLIC FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW 



ST. LOUIS, MO., AND FREIBURG (BADEN) 

Published by B. Herder 

1908 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
1 wo OoDies KecbivM 

JUL 2 1^08 

Oovyric"! envy 
OLASt*/^ aXs. No. 

COPY a. 



\0 



^^%^ 



NIHIL OBSTAT. 

F. G. HOLWECK, 



St. Louis, Dec. 27, 1907. 



Censor, 



St. Louis, Dec. 28, 1907. 



IMPRIMATUR. 

►I^ Joannes J. Glennon, 

Archiepiscopus Sti. Ludovici. 



Copyright, 1908, by Joseph Gummersbach, 



— BECKTOLD— 

PRINTING AND BOOK MFG. CO. 
ST. LOUIS, MO. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTICE 

The question of landownersliip lies at the 
bottom of the whole social problem. So 
many wrong notions are current on owner- 
ship in general, and landownersliip in partic- 
ular, that I believe I shall render the cause 
of truth and justice a real service by re-issu- 
ing in book-form, revised and enlarged, the 
following papers, originally contributed to 
the Catholic Fortnightly Review. They 
contain the only detailed presentation of the 
subject in English, together with the first 
documentary account ever published of the 
famous ''McGlynn case.'' 

The reader will find upon perusal that, in 
answering the question ^^Who owns the 
land?'' this little volume refutes not only 
Agrarian Socialism, or the Single Tax theory 
of Henry George, which is of late enlisting 
so many new recruits — I regret to say even 
among Catholics — but likewise the fundamen- 
tal fallacy underlying Socialistic Commu- 
nism, which in the opinion of so many far- 
sighted observers constitutes the greatest so- 
cial menace of the future. 

Arthur Preuss. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

I. Two Rival Theories 1 

II. Common Landowxership a Fiction . . 9 

III. Private Laxdowxership a Natural Right 29 

IV. Leo XIII. ox Private Property ix Laxd . 41 

Y. PIexry George's Yaix Attempt to Refute 

THE Pope's Argumexts 53 

VI. The Sixgle Tax, or the " Natural " 

System of Taxatiox 96 



VII. Dr. Edward McGlyxx axd Hexry George 113 

VIII. The Truth About Dr. McGlyxx's Resto- 

RATIOX 138 

IX. Whose is the Uxearxed Lax^d Value? . 155 

X. The Fuxdamextal Fallacy of Agrariax- 

iSM, Socialism, axd Communism . . 178 



TWO RIVAL THEOEIES 

Who owns the land? To this question two 
answers are given : The land is the common 
property of all men, or the land of each coun- 
try belongs to the whole people of that coun- 
try as their common property. This is the 
answer of Communists, Socialists and Agra- 
rians. The rest of mankind deny this com- 
mon landownership and maintain that the 
land is owned in severalty, either by individ- 
uals or by corporations. The best known 
and most enthusiastic advocate of common 
landownership is Henry Greorge; the most 
prominent defender of private ownership in 
land is Pope Leo XIII. 

The teachings of Henry George are chiefly 
comprised in his Progress and Poverty and 
in his Open Letter to Pope Leo XIIL; those 
of Leo XIIL in his Encyclical ^'Rerum No- 
varum,'' of May 15th, 1891. 
1 1 



2 TWO RIVAL THEOEIES 

Henry George considers private property 
in land to be the ultimate root and source of 
the social evils which are so keenly felt and 
so bitterly deplored by all. The real cause 
of the evil being ascertained, the true remedy 
is obvious : we must abolish private property 
in land and substitute common ownership. 
But is the abolition of private landownership 
in harmony with natural justice! It is, be- 
cause private ownership of land is essentially 
and irremediably wrong and unjust. 

How can private property in land be done 
away with? Will its abolition not cause a 
disturbance in all social conditions, which 
would be worse than the misery of which we 
now complain? We need not fear: no vio- 
lent measure is required to bring about the 
desired change. We will leave every land- 
owner in the quiet ^'possession'' of all he has ; 
but for the privilege of possessing land and 
of enjoying the blessings of such ' 'posses- 
sion, ' ' we will make him pay the State or the 
community a ''land tax," equal to the profit 
which accrues from land as such, regardless 
of labor and improvement ("land rent," 
"land value"). In this manner we shall 
really make all land common property. For, 
the individual "possessor" of a particular 
piece or tract of land, who pays the State 






TWO RIVAL THEORIES 3 

for the use of such land, is in reality nothing 
more than a tenant of the State or the com- 
munity. 

This is, in substance, the reasoning of 
Henry George. Leo XIIL, on the other 
hand, makes the lawfulness and justice of pri- 
vate landownership the thesis which he pro- 
poses to demonstrate in the first part of his 
Encyclical and, at the end of his argumenta- 
tion, lays it down as an essential basis for all 
true social reform, that private property in 
land must be kept inviolate. Hence it is clear 
that the teachings of Henry George and those 
of Leo XIIL are diametrically opposed. 
Nevertheless, it will be interesting and in- 
structive to see this opposition more in detail. 
Let us, therefore, review some striking asser- 
tions which occur in the VII. book of Prog- 
ress and Poverty, headed: ^^The Justice of 
the Remedy," and contrast them with the 
corresponding utterances of the Pontiff.^ 

Henry George writes: ^^To affirm the 
rightfulness of property in land, is to affirm 
a claim which has no warrant in nature 
. . .'' (p. 242). ^^ Whatever may be said 
for the institution of private property in 
land, it is plain that it cannot be defended on 

1 Our quotations from Progress and Poverty are taken 
from the 4th edition, 1880, " Lovell's Library." 



4 TWO EIVAL THEORIES 

the score of justice" (p. 243). ^^The recog- 
nition of individual proprietorship of land 
is the denial of the natural rights of other 
individuals — it is a wrong which must show 
itself in the inequitable division of wealth" 
(p. 245). 

The Pope writes: ''The remedy which 
(Agrarian Socialists) propose, is manifestly 
repugnant to justice, because the right of 
having private property (in land as well as 
in chattels) is a right granted to man by 
nature." Again, '^It must be possible for 
man to acquire as property not only the fruits 
of the earth, but the very soil itself. . . . 
Nature must have given to man a stable and 
never-failing store-house, from which he may 
expect never-ending supplies. But such 
never-ending supplies nothing can afford ex- 
cept the earth with its abundance and fer- 
tility." 

Henry George says : ''The Almighty, who 
created the earth for man and man for the 
earth, has entailed it upon all generations of 
the children of men by a decree written upon 
the constitution of all things — a decree which 
no human action can bar and no prescription 
determine: Let the parchments be ever so 
many, or possession ever so long, natural 
justice can recognize no right in one man to 



TWO EIVAL THEOEIES 5 

the possession and enjoyment of land that is 
not equally the right of all his fellows" (p. 
244). 

The Pope declares: *^The fact that God 
has given the earth for the nse and enjoyment 
of the whole human race, does not in the least 
prevent the existence of private possessions. 
For, if it is said that God gave the earth to 
mankind in common, this is not to be under- 
stood as if he wanted the common ownership 
of the earth vested in all men (non quod ejus 
promiscuum apud omnes dominatum volu- 
erit), but because he did not assign to any 
one the possession of any particular portion 
of the earth, leaving the actual distribution 
of private possessions to men's industry and 
to the laws of peoples." According to the 
Pontiff, therefore, the earth or the soil, 
though destined for the benefit of all, is by 
nature and originally neither owned by man- 
kind nor by any individual, but is ownerless, 

* ^ res nullius ' ' ; being originally ownerless, yet 
destined to become the property of somebody 
— for man, generally speaking, needs private 
property, — it may be appropriated or ac- 
quired in portions as property by any one. 

Henry George thus forestalls an objection: 

* * But it will be said : There are improvements 
which in time become indistinguishable from 



6 TWO EIVAL THEORIES 

the land itself. Very well; then the title to 
the improvements becomes blended with the 
title to the land; the individual right is lost 
in the common right. It is the greater that 
swallows np the less, not the less that swal- 
lows np the greater. Nature does not pro- 
ceed from man, but man from nature, and it 
is into the bosom of nature that he and all 
his works must return again. ... As 
for the deduction of a complete and exclusive 
individual right to land from priority of oc- 
cupation, that is, if possible, the most absurd 
ground on which landownership can be de- 
fended" (pp. 246 sq.). 

Leo XIII. teaches: *^If a man (cultivat- 
ing a piece of ownerless land) exerts both his 
mental faculties and his physical strength 
in procuring the fruits of nature, by so doing 
he makes his own that portion of the earth 
which he cultivates and on which he leaves, 
as it were, the impress of his personality." 
The same would hold in the case of one who 
would build on ownerless ground; ^^the 
ground on which one has built — solum in quo 
aedificavit — " has thereby become his own 
no less than ^^the estate which he has brought 
under cultivation — praedium quod excoluit." 

Henry George affirms : ^ ' The truth is, and 
from this truth there can be no escape, that 



TWO BIVAL THEOEIES 7 

there is and can be no just title to an exclu- 
sive possession of the soil, and that private 
property in land is a bold, bare, enormous 
wrong, like that of chattel slavery." — '' It 
is impossible for any one to study political 
economy, even as at present taught, or to 
think at all upon the production and distri- 
bution of wealth, without seeing that prop- 
erty in land differs essentially from property 
in things of human production, and that it 
has no warrant in abstract justice" (pp. 
257 sq.). 

Leo XIII. denies an essential difference 
between property in land and things of hu- 
man production. He declares the one as well 
as the other to be derived from nature and 
warranted by justice. The arguments, more- 
over, for the rightfulness and necessity of 
individual landownership are, as he explicitly 
states, so clear that he is amazed to find 
Agrarian Socialists and others granting to 
individuals the ownership of the fruits of the 
earth, but not that of the land itself. He ap- 
provingly quotes in favor of individual land- 
ownership not only the conviction of all ages 
and the just laws of commonwealths, but 
also the authority of the divine law. He con- 
cludes with the emphatic sentence: ^^The 
first and most fundamental principle, accord- 



8 TWO EIVAL THEORIES 

ingly, if we wish to alleviate the miserable 
condition of the masses, must be the inviola- 
bility of private property. — Maneat ergo, 
cum plebi sublevatio qnaeritur, hoc imprimis 
haberi fundamenti instar oportere, privatas 
possessiones inviolate servandas." 



II 

COMMON LANDOWNEESHIP A FICTION 

At the time when Henry George was most 
active in bringing his views before the peo- 
ple, at home and abroad, there appeared 
many able essays and printed lectures refut- 
ing his assertions and meeting his objections 
against private ownership in land. In the 
Neiv York Freeman's Journal, from Febru- 
ary 18th to April 28th, 1888, two series of 
articles by Eev. Victor Cathrein, S.J., were 
published which disproved the tenets of 
Agrarian Socialists from an historical, eco- 
nomical, and ethical standpoint. About a 
year later they were blended together in a 
little volume entitled: The Champions of 
Agrarian Socialism, A Refutation of Emile 
de Laveleye and Henry George, by Rev. Vic- 
tor Cathrein, SJ. (Buffalo, N. Y., Peter 
Paul and Bro., 1889.) The late Mr. Charles 
Stanton Devas called this treatise of Fr. 
Cathrein 's ^^the classic against Henry 
George. ' ' ^ 

1 See Mr. Devas' article on " Agrarianism " in The Cath- 
olic Encyclopedia, vol. I. 

9 



10 COMMON LANDOWNERSHIP 

In his Primitive Property (Paris, 1877, 
English edition, 1878) Emile de Laveleye, 
professor of political economy in the Univer- 
sity of Liege, had attacked private landown- 
ership particularly from the historic point of 
view. He endeavored ^^to prove that every- 
where and in all nations only collective pos- 
session of land (communal property) existed 
in primitive times, and that individual owner- 
ship was developed rather late and only by 
degrees. This development, he says, was 
brought about mostly through cunning and 
deceit, till at length collective possession was 
almost entirely done away with'' (Cathrein, 

p. 11). 

Henry George makes the views of M. de 
Laveleye his own. ^^Historically, as eth- 
ically," he writes, ^^ private property in land 
is robbery. It nowhere springs from con- 
tract ; it can nowhere be traced to perceptions 
of justice or expediency; it has everywhere 
had its birth in war and conquest, and in the 
selfish use which the cunning have made of 
superstition and law." . . . ^* ^In all 
primitive societies, ' — says M. de Laveleye, as 
the result of an investigation which leaves no 
part of the world unexplored — ^in all primi- 
tive societies, the soil was the joint property 
of the tribes and was subject to periodical 



COMMON LANDOWNERSHIP 11 

distribution among the families, so that all 
might live by their labor as nature has or- 
dained' ... If M. de Laveleye be right 
in this conclusion, and that he is right there 
can be no doubt, how, it will be asked, has the 
reduction of land to private ownership be- 
come so general?'' {Progress and Poverty, 
bk. vii, ch. iv, pp. 266-268.) 

Father Cathrein refutes M. de Laveleye 's 
assertions in two chapters, one of which 
treats of property-holding among the Rus- 
sians and Teutons, the other among the 
most ancient Oriental nations. (Cathrein, 
pp. 21-76.) In another chapter he exposes 
the fallacies contained in the arguments 
which Henry George has taken from politi- 
cal economy ^Ho show that private property 
in land necessarily leads to the impoverish- 
ment of the great bulk of mankind." {Ihid. 
pp. 84-96.) It would lead us too far to 
enter upon the field of history or of politi- 
cal economy, and we must, accordingly, refer 
the reader to the respective chapters in 
Cathrein 's volume or to similar treatises. 

In his Open Letter Mr. George says that 
the reform he proposes, *^like all true re- 
forms, has both an ethical and an economic 
side," and he thinks that **the ethical is the 
more important side." In Progress and 



12 COMMON LANDOWNEESHIP 

Poverty lie likewise lays greater stress on the 
justice than on the expediency of his pro- 
posals. ^^When it is proposed," he writes, 
^ ' to abolish private property in land, the first 
question that will arise is that of justice. 
. . . That alone is wise which is just ; that 
alone is enduring which is right. In the nar- 
row scale of individual actions and individ- 
ual life this truth may be often obscured, but 
in the wider field of national life it every- 
where stands out. I bow to this arbitrament, 
and accept this text. ... If private 
property in land be just, then is the remedy 
I propose a false one; if, on the contrary, 
private property in land be unjust, then is 
this remedy the true one." (Book viii, ch. 
i,p.239.) 

Why, therefore, does Henry George, from 
the standpoint of ethics, reject individual 
landownership as unjust? His chief, or 
rather only, argument is thus proposed in 
Progress and Poverty: 

*^What constitutes the right basis of prop- 
erty? What is it that enables a man to justly 
say of a thing, 'It is mine!' From what 
springs the sentiment which acknowledges his 
exclusive right as against all the world? Is 
it not, primarily, the right of a man to him- 



COMMON LANDOWNERSHIP 13 

self, to the use of his own powers, to the en- 
joyment of the fruits of his own exertions? 
. . . As a man belongs to himself, so his 
labor when put in concrete form belongs to 
him. 

*^And for this reason, that which a man 
makes or produces is his own, as against all 
the world — to enjoy or to destroy, to use, to 
exchange, or to give. No one else can right- 
fully claim it, and his exclusive right to it 
involves no wrong to any one else. Thus 
there is to everything produced by human 
exertion a clear and indisputable title to ex- 
clusive possession and enjoyment, which is 
perfectly consistent with justice, as it de- 
scends from the original producer, in whom 
it is vested by natural law. The pen with 
which I am writing is justly mine. No other 
human being can rightfully lay claim to it, 
for in me is the title of the producers who 
made it. It has become mine, because trans- 
ferred to me by the stationer, to whom it was 
transferred by the importer, who obtained the 
exclusive right to it by transfer from the 
manufacturer, in whom, by the same process 
of purchase, vested the rights of those who 
dug the material out of the ground and 
shaped it into a pen. Thus my exclusive 



14 COMMON LANDOWNEESHIP 

right of ownership in the pen springs from 
the natural right of the individual to the use 
of his own faculties. 

^'Now, this is not only the original source 
from which all ideas of exclusive ownership 
arise . . . but it is necessarily the only 
source. There can be to the ownership of 
anything no rightful title which is not derived 
from the title of the producer and does not 
rest upon the natural right of the man to him- 
self. There can be no other rightful title, 
because (1st) there is no other natural right 
from which any other title can be derived, 
and (2nd) because the recognition of any 
other title is inconsistent with and destruc- 
tive of this. . . ." {Progress and Pov- 
erty, bk. vii, ch. i, p. 240.) 

In this form the argument is ably and com- 
pletely answered by Father Cathrein. He 
first sums it up in the following syllogism: 
*'A single individual can call only that his 
own which is the produce of his labor ; now, 
the soil is not the produce of his labor ; hence 
he can not call the soil his own. ' ' He denies 
the major proposition and proves that ^' labor 
is neither the original nor the exclusive source 
of proprietorship " (Cathrein, pp. 100 sqq.). 

Mr. George advances the same argument 
in his Open Letter to the Pope as follows : 



COMMON LANDOWNERSHIP 15 

*^As to the right of ownership we hold: 
That— 

''Being created individuals, with individ- 
ual wants and powers, men are individually 
entitled (subject of course to the moral obli- 
gations that arise from such relations as that 
of the family) to the use of their own pow- 
ers and the enjoyment of the results. 

i i There thus arises, anterior to human law, 
and deriving its validity from the law of God, 
a right of private ownership in things pro- 
duced by labor — a right that the possessor 
may transfer, but of which to deprive him 
without his will would be theft. 

' ' This right of property, originating in the 
right of the individual to himself, is the only 
full and complete right of property. It at- 
taches to things produced by labor, but can 
not attach to things created by God. 

* ' Thus, if a man takes a fish from the ocean 
he acquires a right of property in that fish, 
which exclusive right he may transfer by sale 
or by gift. But he can not obtain a similar 
right of property in the ocean, so that he may 
sell it or give it or forbid others to use it/' 

The reader will have noticed that this rea- 
soning is the same as that quoted above from 
Progress and Poverty. The answer to the 
argument is obvious and is suggested by the 



16 COMMON LANDOWNERSHIP 

very examples with wMch Henry George illus- 
trates his theory. Of course, no sane man 
who admits individual landownership, claims 
or defends right of property in the ocean 
or the atmosphere or the sun, although ^^to 
men," i. e., to Mr. George and his followers, 
ocean, air, sunshine, and soil, are all ^'in- 
volved in the single term land'M Need we 
remind our readers of the fact that the ocean, 
the atmosphere, and the sun, just as the moon 
and the milky way and the whole firmament, 
are physically insusceptible of being taken 
possession of or appropriated either by an 
individual man or even by the whole of man- 
kind! 

Our answer, then, to Mr. George's argu- 
ment is obvious and brief : his theory is self- 
contradictory and does away with all prop- 
erty, not only in the soil, but in everything 
else. 

If a Henry George man rows out into the 
ocean and is so lucky as to ''take from the 
ocean" a fine fish, he can not call it "his," 
he does not "acquire a right of property in 
that fish," for the simple reason that he did 
not produce it ! All fishes, whether living in 
the ocean, or in rivers or lakes, belong to 
the "things created by God," not to the 
"things produced by labor"; but the right 



COMMON LANDOWNERSHIP 17 

of property, Mr. George has just assured us, 
*^can not attach to things created by God." 
Again, if he would go hunting, and kill a hare 
or a duck or a grizzly bear, he could not 
own it, for the same simple reason that he 
did not produce it. And if the whole popula- 
tion of the United States, individually or in 
a body, would go fishing or hunting, the same 
would hold as to what they would catch; for 
'Hhe right of property can not attach to 
things created by God." Nor can a Henry 
George man own the pen with which he writes 
just as Mr. George himself did not and could 
not own the pen he was writing with. How 
so? Because the title by which he held it, 
was essentially vitiated. Mr. George says, 
he bought the pen from the stationer. True, 
but the stationer could not sell it, since he did 
not own it! He had purchased it from an- 
other who could not sell it, viz., the importer. 
The importer, indeed, had got it from the 
manufacturer; but the manufacturer himself 
could not dispose of it, since he did not own 
it; for he in his turn had got it from men 
who had no right to give it to him, viz., ^' those 
who dug the material out of the ground and 
shaped it into a pen". Here lies the radical 
fault that invalidates all further transactions. 
It is not to be overlooked that, according 

2 



18 COMMON LANDOWNEESHIP 

to the common ownership theory, all raw ma- 
terial is the common property of mankind at 
large. Now, in what way can something that 
belongs to all men become the property of 
one or several individuals, to the exclusion 
of all others ? Only in this way that the pre- 
vious ownership vested in all men ceases or 
is destroyed, and that in its stead a new own- 
ership arises, vested in one or several in- 
dividuals and based on a new title. But how 
shall the common ownership in a certain raw 
material cease when one or several dig it 
out of the ground? Does, perhaps, mankind 
by common consent transfer it to those in- 
dividual men? Such consent does not exist 
and therefore can not transfer property. Or 
does, perhaps, the digging and handling of 
the material by some individual or individ- 
uals destroy the proprietorship vested in all 
men and change the common property, with- 
out the consent of its natural owners, i. e., 
mankind, into private property? Such an 
assumption would be absurd. As well might 
a pickpocket be entitled to call his own what 
he cleverly filches from the pocket of his un- 
wary fellow-man? As an occupation or in- 
dustry pocket-picking does not differ essen- 
tially from digging raw material out of the 



COMMON LANDOWNERSHIP 19 

ground or taking fish from the ocean. Bnt 
as to the judicial effect to be produced, there 
is a great ditference between the two cases: 
in the former only an acquired proprietor- 
ship of an individual, in the latter the natural 
proprietorship vested in all men is to 
be destroyed. Can reason approve the ap- 
propriation of raw material by those who dig 
it out of the ground and condemn the appro- 
priation of his neighbor's purse by the pick- 
pocket ? 

It is evident, therefore, that none of those 
through whose hands the pens passed until 
they reached the author of Progress and 
Poverty did really own them, and conse- 
quently Henry George did not own them 
either; he accordingly, wrote that famous 
work and all his other books with pens that 
did not belong to him! But the ink and 
paper, too, which he used, and the chairs on 
which he sat, and the clothes he had on — and 
all other things which he called his own, were 
in reality not his own. For what we have 
said of the pen, holds equally of all other 
material objects. Each and every one of 
them consists of some material which comes 
ultimately from nature, is created by God, 
and therefore belongs to mankind as the com- 



20 COMMON LANDOWNEKSHIP 

mon property of all, that can never be ap- 
propriated by any individual to the exclusion 
of all others. 

The theory of common ownership, there- 
fore, is destructive of all private proprietor- 
ship in movables. But its destructive force 
reaches still farther: it makes the common 
ownership of land itself impossible ! 

All actual ownership must rest on a clear, 
valid title by which the object in question is 
understood to belong rightfully to such or 
such a person or collection of persons. There 
are various titles by which property is trans- 
ferred from one owner to another, such as 
donation, purchase, and the like. These 
titles suppose an object already belonging to 
some owner; hence they necessarily presup- 
pose another title. Among all the valid titles 
of ownership there must manifestly be one 
which does not presuppose any other, but is 
rather presupposed by all others. This ab- 
solutely first title is called the primitive or 
original title of ownership. 

Henry George insists that '^ productive la- 
bor" is the original title of ownership. 
^ ' That which a man makes or produces is his 
own, as against all the world"; and *^ there 
can be to the ownership of anything no right- 
ful title which is not derived from the title 



COMMON LANDOWNERSHIP 21 

of the producer"; '^this right of property"- 
is ^'the only full and complete right of prop- 
erty. It attaches to things produced by la- 
bor, but can not attach to things created by 
God." 

By what title, then, we ask, do the entire 
population of the State of New York own the 
land of the Empire State! Have they pro- 
duced itf No more than a farmer produces 
the land which he cultivates. Hence they do 
not and can not own the territory of their 
State. For the same reason the entire na- 
tion does not and can not own the territory 
of the United States. 

But, one might say, the people of that 
State live there and have been living there 
for many, many years. We answer: mere 
living in a place or district is no title of 
ownership to that place or district. Besides, 
by what right can the people of the Empire 
State exclude another people or nation from 
living there, if they choose? Suppose 10,- 
000,000 Chinese would leave their native 
country in order to settle in the State of New 
York. Could they be excluded on the com- 
mon ownership principle? Could they not 
rightly say: ^'This fair land belongs to us 
as well as to you; you have lived here long 
enough, we want a chance to try our fortune 



22 COMMON LANDOWNERSHIP 

in this part of the western hemisphere. In 
making this demand we only claim what is 
onrs. If yon wish, yon may migrate to 
the regions we have vacated. The great 
improvements we made there will, at least 
in part, compensate yon for the improve- 
ments you have made here; what is wanting 
we shall make good in the conrse of time, for 
we are sure of our prosperity in this beautiful 
and fertile country. But we insist on our 
right which nature gave us. ' ' What answer, 
we ask, could a Henry George man, as gov- 
ernor of New York, for instance, give to 
these ten million Chinese immigrants! None 
but this : ^ ' You are right, my friends. I am 
the last to check or discourage your efforts 
towards greater prosperity. You show that 
you are an energetic, enterprising, progres- 
sive people. Whosoever hinders you from 
possessing and enjoying your lawful prop- 
erty wrongs you grievously ! ' ' 

The reasoning of these fictitious Chinamen 
on the common ownership principle is evi- 
dently correct. But that principle itself, viz., 
that the whole earth is the common property 
of all men, is false, because there is no valid 
title for such ownership. As little as an in- 
dividual or a particular nation, has mankind 
at large produced the earth. The title of 



COMMON LANDOWNERSHIP 23 

production, accordingly, cannot be appealed 
to, and this settles the matter against the 
Henry George system. 

But, perhaps, some other title can be found, 
which proves said ownership to be vested in 
all men, perchance even that which Henry 
George denounces as ^'the most absurd" of 
all titles, — occupation or occupancy. This 
title, however, which is admitted by all who 
defend private landownership, does not exist 
as applied to the earth or to mankind at 
large. Neither has the ivliole earth ever 
been taken by occupancy, nor has the tvJiole 
of mankind ever appropriated anything by 
primitive occupation. All appropriations by 
occupancy do and can only take place as to 
particular and limited portions of the earth 
and by individual men or particular families 
or groups of men or, at the utmost, by partic- 
ular tribes or nations. Occupancy is out of 
question when we speak of the ownership of 
the whole earth being vested in all men. 

There is only one possibility left: a grant 
of the Almighty by which He gave the whole 
earth to the whole human race as their com- 
mon property. Such a grant, indeed, would 
be a valid title. It seems that Henry George 
believed in such a grant. For in his Open 
Letter he quotes approvingly the following 



24 COMMON LANDOWNEESHIP 

passage from a pastoral letter of Dr. Thomas 
Nulty, late Bishop of Meath, Ireland : ^ 
^'God was perfectly free in the act by which 
He created ns; but having created us He 
bound himself by that act to provide us 
with the means necessary for our subsistence. 
The land is the only source of this kind now 
known to us. The land, therefore, of every 
country is the common property of the peo- 
ple of that country, because its real owner, 
the Creator who made it, has transferred it 
as a voluntary gift to them. ^ Terram autem 
dedit filiis hominum.' " ['^ The earth he has 
given to the children of men." Ps. 113, In 
exitu Israel, v. 16.] — Again Mr. George 
writes: ^^ Everywhere [in the Scriptures] 
land is treated as the free bounty of God, 
^the land which the Lord thy God gave 
thee.' " — He might have added in confirma- 
tion the following passages from Genesis: 

^'And God blessed them, saying: Increase 
and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue 
it, and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the 
fowls of the air, and all living creatures that 
move upon the earth. And God said: Be- 
hold I have given you every herb bearing 
seed upon the earth, and all trees that have 

1 Letter Addressed to the Clergy and Laity of the Diocese 
of Meath, Ireland, April 2, 1881. 



COMMON LANDOWNERSHIP 25 

in themselves seed of their own kind, to be 
your meat: and to all beasts of the earth, 
and to every fowl of the air, and to all that 
move npon the earth, and wherein there is 
life, that they may have to feed upon. And 
it was so done." (Gen. i, 28-30.) 

^^And God blessed Noe and his sons. And 
he said to them: Increase and multiply, and 
fill the earth. And let the fear and dread of 
you be upon all the beasts of the earth, and 
upon all the fowls of the air, and all that 
move upon the earth: all the fishes of the 
sea are delivered into your hand. And 
every thing that moveth and liveth shall be 
meat for you: even as the green herbs have 
I delivered them all to you." (Gen. ix, 1-3.) 

Leaving aside the Israelites, to whom ^4he 
land of Canaan" was given by the Lord in a 
special manner, not with common, but with 
private and inheritable landed property 
(Num. xxxiii, 51-54; xxxvi, 7-10), it is easily 
seen that the texts we have adduced contain 
indeed a general grant of the whole earth to 
mankind. The earth is assigned to man as 
his dwelling place and the storehouse whence 
he is to draw what he needs : ^ ^ Fill the earth 
and subdue it," ^'rule" over the irrational 
creatures, all are at your disposal; animals 
as well as vegetables shall be ^^ your meat." 



26 COMMON LANDOWNERSHIP 

But does the grant also specify in detail the 
rule or dominion it bestows on man? Does 
it convey actual ownership in the objects men- 
tioned or only the power or authority of ac- 
quiriJig property ; again, in either of the two 
alternatives is common ownership meant or 
private? Evidently the sacred text does not 
indicate in which of these various meanings 
the original grant is to be understood. It is 
as if God had said: The whole earth is for 
you, that you may be provided for ; as to the 
manner how to use it, you have the light of 
reason; follow it, it is a sure guide. This 
and nothing else is the meaning of the pas- 
sages quoted. It is the truth, which we also 
understand by the mere light of reason, that 
the earth is made for man to enable him to 
live and perfect himself according to the will 
of God and thus to attain his ultimate end in 
the life to come. 

What, then, does reason tell us about the 
use of the great storehouse of nature whence 
we are to be provided for suitably and se- 
curely in this mortal life of hardship and toil? 
It tells us that each man has his individual 
needs which cannot be satisfied except by in- 
dividual objects ; the same individual objects, 
however, cannot satisfy, as a rule, the needs 
of several ; hence man must have the right to 



COMMON LANDOWNEKSHIP 27 

acquire what he needs, so that he can exclude 
others from the selfsame objects, and that 
permanently, because man's needs are per- 
manent; in other words, he must have the 
right to acquire what he needs as Ms private 
and exclusive property. The things, how- 
ever, which man needs not only for his bare 
existence, but for a suitable development and 
advancement also of his higher, intellectual 
and moral, nature, are very many and among 
them some real estate is for most men an in- 
dispensable condition of having a decent 
home, raising a prosperous and happy family, 
and enjoying a stable position in the vicissi- 
tudes of life. To acquire private property 
in land, therefore, must be no less in his 
power than to acquire movable property; 
else he would not be provided for suitably 
and securely. We say ^^to acquire private 
property." For it is evident that no par- 
ticular object and no particular portion 
of land is by nature in any particular 
manner connected with a particular indi- 
vidual, as is necessarily the case when 
one can say: This is mine! Hence God has 
not directly given to the individual man any 
actual property. But, on the other hand, 
man needs private property, in movables and 
immovables. God must, therefore, have in- 



28 COMMON LANDOWNERSHIP 

vested him with the right of appropriating — 
by occupancy — whatever he deems fit to sat- 
isfy his various wants, out of the things of- 
fered by nature and not yet appropriated by 
others. Whosoever exercises his general 
right of acquiring property becomes thereby 
an actual owner. Where there is no oppor- 
tunity for appropriation by occupancy — ^this 
supposes ownerless objects — reason points to 
other ways of acquiring property, viz., labor 
and the various transactions by which prop- 
erty is transferred from one owner to an- 
other. 

This, then, is what natural reason teaches 
concerning property. It demands and sanc- 
tions private property in land as well as in 
chattels, and thereby disproves the common 
ownership advocated by Agrarians, Social- 
ists, and Communists. Accordingly, not 
common actual ownership vested in all men, 
but the establishment of private ownership 
through man's activity, under the guidance 
of practical reason, was the purpose for 
which the Creator made that general grant 
of the earth to mankind ; this we know by the 
light of reason and the word of God in Holy 
Scripture. The common ownership of the 
earth is, and remains, a mere fiction. 



Ill 

PKIVATE LANDOWNEESHIP A NATURAL RIGHT 

Before the year in which he had ascended 
the papal throne came to a close, Leo XIII. 
raised his voice in his Encyclical Letter 
''Quod Apostolici Mnneris," December 28, 
1878, to denounce the errors and pernicious 
schemes of Socialists, Communists and Nihi- 
lists. He pointed out, in particular, that 
these enemies of human society, ''enticed by 
the greed of temporal goods . . . attack 
the right of property sanctioned by the natu- 
ral law — ^jus proprietatis naturali lege 
sancitum impugnant." To their vagaries he 
opposed the teaching of the Church in the 
following words: 

"Catholic wisdom, resting on the precepts 
of the natural and divine law, has wonder- 
fully provided for public and domestic tran- 
quillity by her teachings on the right of 
property and the division of those goods 
which are suited to the necessities and con- 
veniences of life. Socialists decry the right 
of property as a human invention opposed to 

29 



30 PRIVATE LANDOWNEESHIP 

the natural equality of men. . . . The 
Church, on the contrary, acting more wisely 
and profitably by far, acknowledges among 
men who are naturally so different from one 
another in their powers of body and mind, an 
inequality of temporal possessions also, and 
ordains that the right of (private) property 
and dominion springing from nature itself be 
kept inviolate and intact. Ecclesia . . . 
inaequalitatem . . . etiam in bonis possi- 
dendis agnoscit et jus proprietatis ac dominii, 
ab ipsa natura profectum, intactum cuilibet 
et inviolatum esse jubet." 

According to the Encyclical, therefore, the 
right of holding private property, in land as 
well as in chattels, is ^^a right sanctioned 
(i. e., established) by the natural law," a 
right *^ which springs from nature itself," in 
one word, it is a natural right. 

Still more explicit is the Pope's teaching 
concerning property in his Encyclical ^^ Re- 
rum Novarum," of May 15th, 1891. In the 
first part he treats explicitly of landowner- 
ship and in the second of the remedy for so- 
cial evils. He speaks not merely as a pri- 
vate teacher or a philosopher, but as the 
teacher of the Universal Church. ^^In the 
present letter," he writes, ^^the responsibility 
of the Apostolic office urges Us to treat the 



PRIVATE LANDOWNERSHIP 31 

whole question [the condition of the work- 
ing classes] of set purpose and in detail, ijk 
order that no misapprehension may exist as 
to the principles which trnth and justice dic- 
tate for its settlement." And again in the 
beginning of the second part: ^^We ap- 
proach the subject with confidence and in the 
exercise of the rights which manifestly be- 
long to Us, for no practical solution of this 
question will be found apart from the inter- 
vention of religion and of the Church. It is 
We who are the chief guardian of religion 
and the chief dispenser of what pertains to 
the Church, and We must not by silence neg- 
lect the duty incumbent on Us." Leo's 
teaching, therefore, is the teaching of the 
Church, and consequently the subject of land- 
ownership can for a Catholic no longer be an 
open question. 

But we are at present chiefly concerned 
with the philosophical arguments on which 
the institution of private landownership 
rests. These arguments are masterfully de- 
veloped in the first part of the papal letter. 
We shall first review them, with some explan- 
ations, in order to bring out their full mean- 
ing; afterwards we shall give the complete 
text of this part of the Encyclical in a faith- 
ful translation. 



32 PEIVATE LANDOWNERSHIP 

The Pope begins by making four distinct 
charges against the Socialist scheme of sub- 
stituting common for private landownership : 
first, ^4t harms the working classes them- 
selves; moreover, it is most nnjnst, since it 
does violence to lawful proprietors; besides, 
it perverts the functions of the State, and, 
finally, it produces universal confusion." 
Then he develops these four charges, one 
after the other, but especially the second, the 
most important of all. 

The first charge is an obvious, common- 
sense argument — argumentum ad hominem — 
which ought to silence all Socialist reform- 
ers who so loudly and incessantly parade as 
the saviors of the working classes and the 
improvers of their condition. *^Why," a la- 
borer might truly say, ^^you promise to bet- 
ter my condition and deprive me with one 
stroke of the very possibility of acquiring a 
home of my own ! What do I wish for more 
than to have my own home, a substantial 
house on my own ground, with my own gar- 
den and lawn, where, after a day's work, I 
can rest and enjoy myself with my wife and 
children r' *^What happier life," another 
might say, *'than that of a farmer on his own 
estate, who raises his family in the healthful 
occupations of country life 1 He can improve 



PEIVATE LANDOWNEESHIP 33 

and extend his property with his children's 
aid and give them, when they once settle 
down for themselves, similar homes, where 
they may continue the same life of peace and 
contentment. Such has been for years my 
highest ambition." 

To both these men our modern reformers 
would say: ^'Give up your plans; they are 
idle dreams. Private property in land is 
to be abolished. You may have a house 
somewhere, you may have a dwelling and 
stables and cattle on some farm — ^but all the 
land will belong to all. This is the new or- 
der ! ' ' — ^ ^ Thus we should in fact be only ten- 
ants of the commonwealth," the men would 
answer, ^*and this you call happiness and in- 
dependence? We want to dispose of our 
earnings as we please, investing them in 
land, which is the surest means for an inde- 
pendent and happy life here below. We pre- 
fer the old order. Let well enough alone 1 " ^ 

The Pontiff passes to the principal and 
^^ graver charge, the manifest injustice of 
the scheme, since the right of having prop- 

1 Cf . Socialism: Its Theoretical Basis and Practical Ap- 
plication. By Victor Cathrein, S.J. Revised and Enlarged 
hy V. F. Gettelmann, 8.J. (New York, Benziger Brothers, 
1904), Conclusion I. Pp. 361-363, where we read: "But 
to one point we must call attention. Even if Socialism 
were practicable, the great mass of farmers and artisans 
who are at present the objects of the most tender solicitude 
3 



34 PRIVATE LANDOWNERSHIP 

erty [in land] is a right granted to man by 
nature. ' ^ This argument is exposed at great 
length in the papal document. It contains 
two distinct proofs for the lawfulness of pri- 
vate landownership. For in two ways it can 
be shown that the right of having private 
property in land is ^^ granted to man by na- 
ture'': first, from man's rational nature, 
and, secondly, from the nature of the soil. 

To sketch the first proof, it is evident that 
man has the duty to preserve and perfect 
himself in this life in order to attain his ulti- 
mate end. For this he needs many material 
things exclusively for his own use, since the 
same things for the most part cannot serve 
the purposes of several. He must, therefore, 
have the right to acquire material goods in 
such a manner that in their use he is inde- 
pendent of all others and can exclude all 
others from using them; and that not only 
for the present or for a short time, but per- 
manently. 

For man is endowed with reason by which 

on the part of Socialists would have nothing to gain, but 
everything to lose. Independent farmers, artisans, busi- 
ness men are out of question in the Socialist system. Every 
man would but be a member of an immense State ma- 
chinery, enjoying indeed equal rights with all the others, 
but utterly bereft of independence in the matter of gaining 
his livelihood. It were well for the independent farmer 
and artisan to bear this in mind." 



PRIVATE LANDOWNEKSHIP 35 

he also foresees his future needs and is en- 
abled to provide for them in advance and in 
a secure and more abundant manner. More- 
over, his natural prudence urges him actually 
to take these precautions against the uncer- 
tainties of life and to procure the means for 
greater comfort and advancement. Hence 
he must have the right to acquire exterior 
things permanently as his own, i. e., to have 
stable private property. But where is that 
exterior object which affords man in the most 
secure manner what he needs for his suitable 
subsistence and improvement? It is the 
earth, which by its abundance and fertility is 
a never-failing storehouse of supplies. 
Hence he must have the right to acquire as 
his own also land, i. e., a suitable portion of 
the soil, and can make use of this right, i. e., 
acquire actual landed property, whenever an 
opportunity is offered and no other right is 
violated. 

The right, therefore, of having private 
property in land as well as in chattels, fol- 
lows from man's rational nature, and con- 
sequently is granted to him by the natural 
order or law. Of course, this does not mean 
that every man is horn an actual landowner; 
but every one has by nature the right to he- 
come a landowner. The actual appropria- 



36 PRIVATE LANDOWNEESHIP 

tion of land as of chattels proceeds from 
man's activity, and is naturally very mani- 
fold, according to individual choice, ability, 
and opportunity; and, we must add, accord- 
ing to the dispositions of the civil law. For 
although the right of having private prop- 
erty in land and chattels is a natural right, 
proceeding directly from man's rational na- 
ture and not from the State, — in fact, man is 
older than the State, — it is nevertheless true 
that in civilized society the natural rights of 
property must not only be protected by the 
civil law, but are frequently also determined 
or regulated as to their actual application. 
Nor is it necessary that all men should be 
actual proprietors of land; but there should 
be many, very many ; thus all men will be well 
provided for, either directly or indirectly, 
from God's large storehouse, ^^the earth with 
its abundance and fertility." 

The same truth, — that the natural law au- 
thorizes man to acquire private property in 
land, — can also be proved from the nature of 
the soil. The earth is indeed productive; 
yet to provide man sufficiently and perma- 
nently, it needs constant care and cultivation. 
Now if a man cultivates a piece of ground 
which has no owner, or builds on such ground, 
natural reason tells us that he thereby makes 



PRIVATE LANDOWNEESHIP 37 

that land his own, and no one can advance or 
urge any claim to it without injustice. It is 
the same as if a traveller in a primeval for- 
est would shape a suitable piece of wood into 
a staff or weapon; that staff or weapon 
would undoubtedly be his own. 

The deeper reason of such appropriation 
lies in this that, whenever a man works inde- 
pendently of all others and entirely for him- 
self, being neither helped by others nor bound 
by any title to work for others, the ivhole re- 
sult of his labor is entirely his; he can, ac- 
cordingly, enjoy it fully and dispose of it 
completely and independently; for this is 
meant by having something as one's own. 
Now such exactly is the case of a man who 
cultivates an ownerless field or builds a 
house with his own or with ownerless ma- 
terial on ownerless ground. He works inde- 
pendently and entirely for himself. The di- 
rect and immediate effect, therefore, of his 
labor, i. e., the physical improvements made 
in the soil and the actual form given to the 
building material, are entirely his own. But 
what would his ownership or the right to the 
full enjoyment and free disposal of the ef- 
fects of his labor avail him, if he could not 
likewise freely dispose of the soil and the ma- 
terial in which those effects are inseparably 



38 PRIVATE LANDOWNERSHIP 

embodied! The free disposal of the former 
without the free disposal of the latter is im- 
possible. Hence it follows that the owner of 
the improvements must also be the owner of 
the soil. Whosoever denies him the owner- 
ship of the soil, practically destroys his own- 
ership in the improvements and thns, for- 
sooth, ^ ^ robs him of the very f rnits of his la- 
bor." Cultivation and improvement, there- 
fore, of ownerless land actually imply the ap- 
propriation of that land. 

For the rest, actual cultivation or improve- 
ment is not absolutely necessary for actual 
ownership. A piece of ownerless land could 
be set apart and marked as appropriated by 
some one before any cultivation or improve- 
ment took place, e. g., by a fence or some visi- 
ble landmarks. The ensuing cultivation, 
however, and the improvements, mark it still 
more clearly as appropriated and furnish, as 
we have just seen, a special argument for the 
lawfulness of private property in land. 

After proving the justice of private prop- 
erty in land from the nature of man and the 
nature of the soil, the Pope adds a threefold 
confirmation: from the conviction of man- 
kind, the civil laws of nations, and the au- 
thority of divine revelation. 

Having thus substantiated his second 



PRIVATE LANDOWNERSHIP 39 

charge against the socialization of the soil, 
he passes to the third, viz., that this scheme 
*^ perverts the functions of the State." 

Thus far man has been considered merely 
as an individual person. Now, if we take 
into account his family relation, his right of 
having private property in land will appear 
in still clearer light. For in his capacity as 
head of a family his right of having private 
property must be the stronger as in the do- 
mestic circle his charge extends over more per- 
sons. The welfare and security of the family 
for the present and the future, require the 
ownership of productive property, which by 
inheritance can be transmitted to the chil- 
dren. It is, therefore, a demand of nature 
that such right be vested in the head of the 
family independently of the State, since the 
family is naturally prior to the State, and 
that such right should be protected rather 
than destroyed or curtailed in the common- 
wealth. The scheme, therefore, of socializ- 
ing the land and having the community or 
the State administer the landed property 
needed by, and belonging in justice to, the 
single families, transfers to the State the nat- 
ural right of the parent and thus attacks and 
invades the sacred precincts of the home. 

From the foregoing considerations follows, 



40 PEIVATE LANDOWNEESHIP 

finally, the truth of the last charge, that so- 
cializing the soil would ''create universal 
confusion." The peace and prosperity of 
society at large demand most emphatically 
the existence of private property not only in 
chattels, but also in land; without it the way 
would be paved to a slavish dependence of 
the citizens upon the State, and a wide door 
would be thrown open to mutual discord, to 
universal misery and degradation. These 
are the arguments advanced by Leo XIII. to 
show the necessity and lawfulness of private 
property in land. We subjoin the exact 
words of the Pope. 



IV 

LEO XIII. ON PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND * 

^^To remedy this evil [the miserable condi- 
tion of the masses] the Socialists, working on 
the poor man's envy of the rich, maintain 
that private ownership of [landed] property 
must be overthrown and in its stead property 
common to all be introduced, to be adminis- 
tered by those who are at the head of munic- 
ipal bodies or of the entire commonwealth. 
By thus transferring property from private 
persons to the community, the present evil 
state of things, they believe, will be cured and 
temporal goods and comforts be equitably 
distributed among the citizens. But this 
scheme is so manifestly unsuited to solve the 
social question, that [in the first place] it 
would harm the working classes themselves ; 
moreover, it is unjust, since it does violence 
to lawful proprietors ; besides, it perverts the 
functions of the State, and, finally, produces 
universal confusion. 

1 From the Encyclical " Reriim Novarum " of May 15, 
1891. {Acta Leonis, Ed. Desclee, de Brouwer et Soc, Vol. 
IV, pp. 178 sqq.) Our translation was made with the view 
of rendering the sense as faithfully as possible. 

41 



42 LEO XIII. ON 

^^(I.) It IS easy to see that, when a work- 
ingman engages in remunerative labor, the 
immediate motive and direct purpose of his 
work is, to obtain property and to hold and 
enjoy it as his own. For if a man hires out 
his strength and his industry to another, he 
does this with the intention of receiving in 
return what is necessary for food and living ; 
he, therefore, expressly means to acquire a 
real and perfect right not only to the wages 
but also to the free disposal of them accord- 
ing to his own good pleasure. Hence, if he 
by living sparingly saves some money and, 
for greater security, invests his savings in 
real estate, that real estate is in fact noth- 
ing else than his wages in another form ; con- 
sequently the land which the workingman has 
thus bought will be in his power just as were 
the wages he had gained by his labor. But, 
as will be readily understood, it is precisely 
in this power of free disposal that the right 
of property consists, whether in land or chat- 
tels. The Socialists, therefore, in endeavor- 
ing to transfer all [landed] property from 
individuals to the community, strike at the in- 
terests of every wage-earner; for they de- 
stroy his power of disposing of his wages at 
will and thereby deprive him of the hope and 



PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND 43 

possibility of increasing his stock and of bet- 
tering his condition in life. 

*^ (II.) What is of still greater importance, 
however, is that the remedy they propose is 
manifestly against justice, since the right of 
having property [in land] is a right granted 
to man by nature. 

*^ (a.) Indeed in this regard, too, there is a 
sharp distinction between man and the animal 
creation. For the brute has no power of 
self-direction, but is governed by two chief 
instincts, which not only preserve and prop- 
erly develop its powers, but also arouse and 
determine all its particular actions. These 
instincts are self-preservation and the propa- 
gation of the species. Both can conveniently 
attain their purpose by the use of things 
which are close at hand; beyond these the 
brute cannot go, because it is moved to action 
by sensibility alone and by particular objects 
perceived by the senses. 

*^It is far different, however, in the case of 
man. He possesses, on the one hand, the full 
perfection of animal nature, and therefore en- 
joys, at least as much as the brute animals, 
the fruition of what corporal things offer. 
But animality, however perfect, is far from 
being the whole of human nature; it is hu- 



44 LEO XIII. ON 

manity's humble handmaid, made to serve 
and obey. The mind, or reason, is the chief 
thing in ns; it is this which makes a human 
being human, and distinguishes him essen- 
tially and completely from the brute. And 
on this account — ^viz., because man alone 
among animals possesses reason — it must be 
within his right to have things not merely for 
actual and temporary use, as other living 
creatures have them, but to hold them in 
stable and permanent possession; and not 
only things which in being used are con- 
sumed, but also such as, though used, re- 
main unimpaired. 

^'This becomes still more evident if we 
consider man's nature a little more deeply. 
For man, comprehending by the power of his 
reason things innumerable, and joining the 
future with the present ; being, moreover, the 
master of his own actions, governs himself 
by the foresight of his counsel, under the 
eternal law and the power of God Whose 
Providence rules all things. Wherefore it 
is in his power to exercise his choice not 
only on things which regard his present wel- 
fare, but also on those which will be for his 
advantage in time to come. Hence it must be 
possible for him to acquire as property not 
only the fruits of the earth, but the very soil 



PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND 45 

itself ; for it is in the produce of the latter that 
he finds the necessaries of life for the future. 
Man's needs do not pass away, but return 
unceasingly; though satisfied to-day, they 
demand new supplies for the morrow. Na- 
ture, therefore, must have given to man a 
stable and never-failing storehouse from 
which he may draw never-ending supplies. 
But such never-ending supplies nothing can 
afford except the earth with its abundance 
and fertility. 

^^Nor need we for this right apply to the 
State. Man is older than the State and con- 
sequently must have possessed, prior to the 
formation of any State, the right of provid- 
ing for his subsistence. — The fact, further- 
more, that God has given the earth for the 
use and enjoyment of the whole human race, 
does not in the least prevent the existence of 
private possessions. For if it is said that 
God gave the earth to mankind in common, 
this is not to be understood as if He wanted 
the common ownership of the earth vested in 
all men, but because He did not assign to 
any one the possession of any particular por- 
tion of the earth, leaving the actual distribu- 
tion of private possessions to men's industry 
and to the laws of peoples. 

^^For the rest, in whatever manner the 



46 LEO XIII. ON 

earth may be divided among private owners, 
it never ceases to minister to the needs of 
all; for there is no one who does not derive 
his subsistence from the produce of the soil. 
Those who have no landed property make up 
for this by their labor. Hence it may truly 
be said that all human subsistence is derived 
either from the labor expended on one's own 
land, or from some other laborious industry, 
the reward of which consists in some product 
of the soil, or at any rate is exchanged for 
what the land brings forth. 

** (b.) Hence there arises a new proof that 
private property in land is in perfect har- 
mony with the natural law. For the things 
which man needs for the preservation of his 
life, and especially for his well-being and im- 
provement, the earth furnishes indeed in 
great abundance, but not without cultivation 
and care expended on the soil. Now if a 
man exerts both his mental faculties and his 
physical strength in procuring the fruits of 
nature, by so doing he makes his own that 
portion of the earth which he cultivates and 
on which he leaves, as it were, the impress 
of his personality. Wherefore it can not but 
be just that he should possess that same por- 
tion of the earth as his very own, and it 



.PKIVATE PEOPERTY IN LAND 47 

cannot be lawful for any one to violate such 
right. 

^'The force of these arguments is so evi- 
dent that it seems amazing that some should 
be setting up certain obsolete opinions in op- 
position to what has here been maintained. 
They grant to the individual man the use of 
the soil and the various products of landed 
possessions, but declare it absolutely wrong 
that one should consider himself the real 
owner of the land on which he has built or 
of the estate which he has brought under cul- 
tivation. Forsooth, the opponents of indi- 
vidual landownership do not see that they 
are robbing man of the very fruits of his la- 
bor. For the soil which is cultivated with 
labor and skill utterly changes its condition : 
from being wild it becomes productive, from 
being barren, fruitful. That which has thus 
altered and improved the land is so closely 
connected and so perfectly identified with the 
same that for the greatest part it can in no 
wise be separated from it any more. Now 
would it not be a violation of justice if any 
one would appropriate for himself and enjoy 
that which another has gained in the sweat 
of his brow? As effects follow the cause by 
which they have been produced, so it is but 



48 LEO XIII. ON 

just and right that the fruits of labor should 
belong to those who have bestowed the 
labor. 

^^ (c.) With good reason, therefore, has the 
whole of mankind, not minding the dissenting 
opinions of a few, but rather carefully study- 
ing the demands of nature, seen in the nat- 
ural law itself the foundation for the division 
of earthly goods; and with good reason has 
it by the practice of all ages consecrated the 
existence of private possessions as being pre- 
eminently in harmony with human nature 
and conducive to the peace and tranquillity 
of society. — The civil laws, moreover, which, 
so long as they are just, derive their binding 
force from the natural law, likewise confirm 
and protect, even by coercion, the right of 
property of which we are speaking. — The 
same has, finally, been sanctioned by the au- 
thority of the divine law, which most severely 
forbids us even to covet that which belongs to 
another. ^Thou shalt not covet thy neigh- 
bor's wife, nor his house, nor his field, nor his 
man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his 
ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is his.' 
(Deut. V, 21.) 

*^ (III.) The rights here spoken of, belong- 
ing to each individual man, are seen in a 
much stronger light, if they are considered in 



PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND 49 

connection with man's obligations in the do- 
mestic circle. 

^'In choosing a state of life, it is indisputa- 
ble that all are at full liberty either to fol- 
low the counsel of Jesus Christ as to virginity 
or to enter into the bonds of marriage. No 
human law can take from man the natural 
and primitive right to marry, or in any 
way limit the principal purpose of marriage, 
ordained by God's authority from the begin- 
ning: * Increase and multiply.' (Gen. i, 28.) 
Thus we have the family or domestic society, 
small, indeed, in numbers, but a true society 
and one which is older than any civil so- 
ciety and therefore must have rights and 
duties of its own, totally independent of the 
commonwealth. The right of private prop- 
erty, then, which has been proved to belong 
naturally to man as an individual person, 
must likewise belong to him as the head of a 
family; nay, this right must be the stronger 
as in the domestic circle his charge extends 
over more persons. 

^^For it is a most sacred natural law that 
the father of a family must provide food and 
all necessaries for those whom he has begot- 
ten ; besides, nature herself instills in him also 
the desire to provide for the future of his 
children who carry on, as it were, and con- 



50 LEO XIII. ON 

tinue his own personality, so as to enable 
them honorably to keep themselves from want 
and misery in the uncertainties of this mortal 
life. Now in no other way can a father ef- 
fect this, except by the ownership of produc- 
tive property which he can transmit to his 
children by inheritance. 

^'The family, no less than the State, is, as 
We have said, a true society, governed by a 
power within itself, that is, by the father. 
Wherefore, provided the limits prescribed 
by the immediate purpose of its existence be 
not transgressed, the family has, at least, 
equal rights with the State in the choice and 
pursuit of those things which are needful to 
its preservation and its just liberty. We 
say, at least equal rights; for since the do- 
mestic household is anterior both in idea and 
in fact to the union of men in the common- 
wealth, its rights and duties must likewise 
be prior and more immediately based on na- 
ture than are those of the State. If the citi- 
zens or the families on entering into associa- 
tion and fellowship experienced at the hands 
of the State hindrance instead of help and 
found their rights curtailed instead of pro- 
tected, such association were rather to be re- 
pudiated than sought after. 

*'The notion, then, that the civil govern- 



PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND 51 

ment should, at its own discretion, penetrate 
and pervade the family and the household, is 
a great and pernicious error. — True, if a 
family finds itself in very great stress, ut- 
terly friendless, and without prospect of as- 
sistance, it is right that extreme necessity be 
met by public aid; for each family is a part 
of the commonwealth. In like manner, if 
within the walls of a household there occur 
grave disturbances of mutual rights, the pub- 
lic power must interfere to force each party 
to give the other his due; for this is not to 
rob citizens of their rights, but justly and 
properly to safeguard and strengthen them. 
But here the rulers of the State must stop; 
nature bids them go no farther. Fraternal 
authority can neither be abolished by the 
State, nor absorbed by it ; for it has the very 
same source as human life itself. ^ The child 
belongs to the father, ' and is, as it were, the 
continuation of the father 's personality ; and, 
to speak accurately, the child takes its place 
in civil society not in its own right, but in 
its quality as a member of the family in 
which it is begotten. And it is for this very 
reason that ^the child belongs naturally to the 
father,' that, as St. Thomas Aquinas says, 
* Before it attains the use of free will, it is in 
the power and care of its parents.' (S. Th. 



52 PEIVATE PEOPERTY IN LAND 

n. II. qu. 10. art. 12.) The Socialists, there- 
fore, in setting aside the solicitude of the 
parents and introducing the providence of 
the State, act against natural justice^ and 
threaten the very existence of family life. 

^^(IV.) And such interference is not only 
unjust, but is quite certain to harass and dis- 
turb all classes of citizens, and to subject 
them to odious and intolerable slavery. It 
would open the door to envy, to evil-speaking 
and to quarrelling ; the very sources of wealth 
would necessarily run dry, for no one would 
have any interest in exerting his talents or 
his industry; and that universal equality 
which they imagine, would, in reality, be the 
levelling of all to the same condition of mis- 
ery and dishonor. 

^^From all We have said it is clear that 
the main tenet of Socialists, viz., the substi- 
tution of common for private ownership, 
must be utterly rejected. It works harm to 
those who are to be assisted; it is contrary 
to the natural rights of individuals; it per- 
verts the functions of the State; it destroys 
the peace and harmony of society. The first 
and most fundamental principle, therefore, 
if we wish to alleviate the miserable condi- 
tion of the masses, must be the inviolability 
of private property. '^ 



pope's arguments 

Henry George's The Condition of Labor: 
An Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII,, is in more 
than one respect a curious literary produc- 
tion. It shows, among other things, how a 
gifted and well-meaning man may eventually 
be so completely taken up by one false notion 
as to lose sight even of the most elementary 
truths and the most obvious facts. It shows, 
above all, that this Agrarian Socialist had 
perfectly well understood the import of the 
papal document. ^^I have read with care," 
he begins, ^^your Encyclical Letter On the 
Condition of Labor, addressed, through the 
Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, and 
Bishops of your faith, to the Christian 
World. Since its most strikingly pronounced 
condemnations are directed against a theory 
that we who hold it know to be deserving of 
your support, I ask permission to lay before 
your Holiness the grounds of our belief, and 
to set forth some considerations that you 

53 



54 HENEY GEORGE VS. LEO XIII. 

have unfortunately overlooked. The mo- 
mentous seriousness of the facts you refer to, 
the poverty, suffering and seething discon- 
tent that pervade the Christian world, the 
danger that passion may lead ignorance in a 
blind struggle against social conditions rap- 
idly becoming intolerable, are my justifica- 
tion." 

The author does not hesitate to remind the 
Pontiff again and again of the serious error 
into which his prejudices have caused him to 
fall. Let us cull a few passages from the 
Open Letter, 

^*To your proposition that ^Our first and 
most fundamental principle, when we under- 
take to alleviate the condition of the masses, 
must be the inviolability of private property, ' 
we would joyfully agree if we could only un- 
derstand you to have in mind the moral ele- 
ment, and to mean rightful private property, 
as when you speak of marriage as ordained 
by God's authority we may understand an 
implied exclusion of improper marriages. 
Unfortunately, however, other expressions 
show that you mean private property in gen- 
eral and have expressly in mind private 
property in land. This confusion of thought 
[!], this non-distribution of terms [!], runs 
through your whole argument [!], leading 



HENRY GEORGE VS. LEO XIII. 55 

you to conclusions so unwarranted by your 
premises as to be utterly repugnant to them, 
as when from the moral sanction of private 
property in things produced by labor you 
infer something entirely different and utterly 
opposed, a similar right of property in the 
land created by God.'^ 

*^Your use, in so many passages of your 
Encyclical, of the inclusive term 'property' 
or 'private property,' of which in morals 
nothing can be either affirmed or denied, 
makes your meaning, if we take isolated 
sentences, in many places ambiguous [!]. 
But reading it as a whole, there can be no 
doubt of your intention that private property 
in land shall be understood when you speak 
merely of private property. With this in- 
terpretation, I find that the reasons you urge 
for private property in land are eight. Let 
us consider them in order of presentation." 

* ' But while we appreciate the many whole- 
some truths you utter, . . . yet it is 
painfully obvious to us that one fatal as- 
sumption hides from you the cause of the 
evils you see, and makes it impossible for 
you to propose any adequate remedy. This 
assumption is, that private property in land 
is of the same nature and has the same sanc- 
tions as private property in things produced 



56 HENEY GEORGE VS. LEO XIII. 

by labor. In spite of its undeniable truths 
and its benevolent spirit, your Encyclical 
shows you to be involved in such difficulties 
as a physician called to examine one suffer- 
ing from disease of the stomach would meet 
should he begin with the refusal to consider 
the stomach." [Sid] 

**One false assumption prevents you from 
seeing the real cause and true significance of 
the facts that have prompted your Ency- 
clical. And it fatally fetters you when you 
seek a remedy." 

**In the beginning of the Encyclical you 
declare that the responsibility of the apos- 
tolic office urges your Holiness to treat the 
question of the condition of labor ^expressly 
and at length in order that there may be no 
mistake as to the principles which truth and 
justice dictate for its settlement.' But, 
blinded by one false assumption, you do not 
see even fundamentals." [!!] 

It is amusing to hear a man like Henry 
George accuse Leo XIII. of confusion of 
thought and ambiguity in terms. The entire 
Encyclical ^'Eerum Novarum" is a master- 
piece of precision, conciseness, and depth of 
thought, which cannot adequately be ren- 
dered by any translation. As to the term 
'* property," it is evident from his very first 



HENRY GEORGE VS. LEO XIII. 57 

argument, that the Pontiff treats explicitly 
of landed property only; speaking all along 
of praedium, fundus, terra, possessiones, 
ager, naturae corporeae pars, solum, he need 
not add each time that this property is meant 
to be property in land. Moreover, ^Hhat 
private property in land is of the same na- 
ture and has the same sanctions as private 
property in things produced by labor," the 
Pope does not ^^ assume," but ^^demon- 
strates" from various sources, in particular 
from the nature, individual and social, of 
man, and from the nature of the soil. 
Thereby he disproves common landowner- 
ship, the tenet so dear to all Communistic 
systems, and thus refutes efficaciously and 
with one stroke Agrarians, Socialists, and 
Communists of whatever description. 

From the seriousness and boldness of Mr. 
George's pronouncements we should expect 
that he had found some formidable objections 
against the Pope's arguments; but when we 
analyze his exceptions we are reminded of 
the Latin saying, ^'Parturiunt montes, nas- 
cetur ridiculus mus!" Nevertheless, we 
shall review them ^4n order of presenta- 
tion." They will offer us an opportunity of 
elucidating all the details of the natural 
right theory of ownership. Besides, they 



58 HENEY GEORGE VS. LEO XIII. 

have never, as far as we are aware, been ex- 
plicitly refuted in any English book or 
treatise.^ 

Mr. George begins: *^You nrge: 1. 
That what is bought with rightful property 
is rightful property. — Clearly, purchase and 
sale cannot give, but can only transfer own- 
ership. Property that in itself has no moral 
sanction does not obtain moral sanction by 
passing from seller to buyer. If right rea- 
son does not make the slave the property of 
the slave hunter, it does not make him the 
property of the slave buyer. Yet your rea- 
soning as to private property in land would 
as well justify property in slaves. To show 
this it is only needful to change in your argu- 
ment the word land to the word slave. It 
would then read: . . ." 

This objection is directed against the first 
argument or ^^ charge'' of the Pope. The 
answer is obvious. 

(a) The sentence, apparently taken verba- 
tim from the Encyclical, is not there at all. 

(b) In his first argument Leo XIII. does 

1 Mr. George's Open Letter was answered by the Civiltct 
Cattolica, 1892, I. pp. 194-203 and pp. 316-322. His objec- 
tions are also ably refuted by Eev. Henry Pesch, S.J., in his 
volume on Liheralismus, Socialismus und Christliche Ge- 
sellschaftsordnung (pp. 278-330), which is the ninth 
" Heft " of Die sociale Frage illustrated by the Stimmen aus 
Maria-Laach (Herder, Freiburg, 1896). 



HENRY GEORGE VS. LEO XIII. 59 

not pretend to prove the justice of private 
property in land — this is expressly reserved 
for the second; he merely calls attention to 
the obvious and palpable fact that the social- 
ization of the soil would ^'harm the working 
classes themselves." 

(c) The application of the alleged principle 
to the purchasing of slaves, is altogether out 
of place, since the Pope neither maintains 
nor uses that absurd maxim in his ' ' argumen- 
tum ad hominem." Those acquainted with 
Henry George's writings know that identify- 
ing private landownership with chattel slav- 
ery is one of his hobbies. Here he wastes 
four pages in an endeavor to inspire the 
Pope and other readers with horror against 
these two ' ' forms of the same robbery. ' ' In 
fact, the four pages must fill a candid and re- 
flecting mind with horror because they teem 
with absurd statements and wild exaggera- 
tions. Just listen for a moment : 

^^ Private property in land, no less than 
private property in slaves, is a violation of 
the true rights of property. They are dif- 
ferent forms of the same robbery; twin de- 
vices by which the perverted ingenuity of 
man has sought to enable the strong and the 
cunning to escape God's requirement of la- 
bor by forcing it on others. 



60 HENEY GEOEGE VS. LEO XIII. 

*^What difference does it make whether I 
merely own the land on which another man 
must [?] live or own the man himself? [A 
very great difference.] Am I not in the one 
case as much his master as in the other? 
[No.] Can I not compel him to work 
for me? [No.] Can I not take to myself as 
much of the fruits of his labor; as fully dic- 
tate his actions? [No.] Have I not over 
him the power of life and death? [No.] 
For to deprive a man of land is as certainly 
to kill him [ !] as to deprive him of blood by 
opening his veins, or of air by tightening a 
halter around his neck."[!] What a splen- 
did array of arguments! Mr. George may 
rest easy; in the natural system of private 
landownership no landowner ^^can," i. e., 
is empowered to deprive another man of 
land. For the same natural law that 
grants him the right to own land, limits this 
right by essential conditions and imposes 
upon hiin duties towards his f ellowmen which 
he is in justice bound to observe; besides, if 
the civil authority, in the interest of the pub- 
lic welfare, has made special enactments con- 
cerning landed property, the landowner is 
by the natural law obliged to observe also 
these ^^ positive'* laws. Among the numer- 



HENRY GEORGE VS. LEO XIII. 61 

ous wrong notions of Henry George we find 
also these: That according to the theory of 
private landownership one or half a dozen 
men could appropriate — by occupation — the 
whole earth; that, private property in land 
once admitted, there is no restraint put on 
landowners as to the use of their property: 
not by the natural law, which grants them an 
^'absolute" right; nor by the civil law, be- 
cause to admit any such State interference 
would be ^^Socialistic." These two absurd 
notions are the basis of his tirades — not 
against those landowners only who abuse 
their rights of ownership, but against land- 
ownership as such, as if the abuses of proprie- 
torship were an essential feature, a part and 
parcel of the system. Is there any right that 
cannot be abused! Are the rights of prop- 
erty in movables not abused too, perhaps to 
an equal if not to a far greater extent than 
the rights of landownership? Yet landown- 
ers alone are held responsible by our Agra- 
rian economist for all the miseries of society ! 

^^2, That private property in land proceeds 
from man's gift of reason, 

^^In the second place your Holiness argues 
that man possessing reason and forethought 
may not only acquire ownership of the fruits 



62 HENRY GEORGE VS. LEO XIII. 

of the earth, but also of the earth itself, so 
that out of its products he may make pro- 
vision for the future. 

^'Reason, with its attendant forethought, 
is indeed the distinguishing attribute of man 
. . . and labor involves the use of reason. 
. . . It is mind, the intelligent reason, that 
is the prime mover in labor, the essential 
agent in production. The right of private 
ownership does therefore indisputably attach 
to things provided by man's reason and fore- 
thought. But it cannot attach to things pro- 
vided by the reason and forethought of God ! ' ' 

This is no refutation of the Pope's argu- 
ment taken from man's rational nature. The 
last sentence quoted is a mere assertion and 
is obviously false. Why should I not be al- 
lowed to appropriate for my exclusive use a 
share of those numberless necessary or use- 
ful things which the Almighty has provided 
for all his children? Would I thereby rob 
others or prevent them from likewise acquir- 
ing a share? 

Henry George insists on his demand that 
you must first produce something by labor, 
then only can you own it. But in order to 
produce something, you must have some ma- 
terial to work upon and to make something 
of, say a walking cane, a club, an arrow. 



HENRY GEORGE VS. LEO XIII. 63 

Now suppose just when you are ready to 
begin your work, I snatch the particular 
piece of wood which you intended to shape 
into an arrow, out of your hand, run away, 
and make myself an arrow out of it. Whose 
is this arrow? I say with Henry George, it 
is mine, because I produced it. And I hear 
you at once indignantly protest and exclaim : 
''You had no right to snatch that piece of 
wood out of my hand ; you took away from 
me what was mine; you did me a wrong!" 
My answer is ready: ''So you claim that 
piece of wood was yours before you had made 
or begun to make something out of it by your 
labor — and you are right. First you must 
have or acquire some material as your own; 
then only can you teg in to work on it to the 
exclusion of all others, and what you then 
make of it by your labor, is undoubtedly 
yours ' as against all the world. ' ^ ' 

Production, accordingly, can not be the 
first, nor consequently the only^ title of pro- 
prietorship. Before you can proceed to 
produce, you must acquire as your own some 
one object from among the numberless things 
provided by God's providence and not yet ap- 
propriated by others. The acquisition of an 
ownerless object takes place by apprehension 
or "occupation." 



64 HENRY GEOEGE VS. LEO XIII. 

To support his view, Henry George uses 
an illustration: ''Let us suppose a company 
travelling through the desert. . . . Such 
of them as had the forethought to provide 
themselves with vessels of water would ac- 
quire a just right of property in the water 
so carried. . . . For while water itself 
is of the providence of God, the presence of 
this water in such vessels, at such place, re- 
sults from the providence of the men who 
carried it. Thus they have to it an exclusive 
right. But suppose others use their fore- 
thought in pushing ahead and appropriating 
the springs, refusing when their fellows come 
up to let them drink of the water save as they 
buy it from them. "Would such forethought 
give any right?" Why not, if in that place 
there were many springs and that thoughtful 
party would seize one of them! Mr. George 
evidently has in his mind one or a few men 
seizing, i. e., occupying, a whole continent 
or the whole earth. 

"Let me show this more fully, since it may 
be worth while to meet those who say that if 
private property in land be not just, then pri- 
vate property in the products of labor is not 
just, as the material of these products is 
taken from land. It will be seen on consider- 
ation that all of man's production is anal- 



HENRY GEORGE VS. LEO XIII. 65 

ogous to such transportation of water as we 
have supposed. In growing grain, or smelt- 
ing metals, or building houses, or weaving 
cloth, or doing any of the things that consti- 
tute producing, all that man does is to change 
in place or form pre-existing matter. As a 
producer, man is merely a changer, not a 
creator; God alone creates. And since the 
changes in which man's production consists 
inhere in matter so long as they persist, the 
right of private ownership attaches the acci- 
dent to the essence, and gives the right of 
ownership in that natural material in which 
the labor of production is embodied. Thus 
water, which in its original form and 
place is the common gift of God to all 
men, when drawn from its natural reservoir 
and brought into the desert, passes right- 
fully into the ownership of the individual 
who by changing its place has produced it 
there. ' ' 

Here we have a fair specimen of Henry 
George 's accuracy of thought and expression. 
What he tries to prove is that water which 
is brought into the desert becomes thereby 
the private property of him who carries it 
there and, in general, that the producer can 
claim the product of his labor as his private 
property, although the material of the prod- 

5 



66 HENEY GEORaE VS. LEO XIII. 

net is taken from land, the common property 
of all. Does he prove anything? Let ns 
first take the case of those carrying water 
into the desert. 

We trust Mr. George will not compel us 
to carry the water into a desert in order to 
own it ; but that he will grant it to us as our 
own as soon as we have drawn it from its 
** original place'' where it is ^^the common 
gift of God to all men." Why do we own it 
then? Because ^'the presence of this water 
in such vessels, in this place, results from the 
providence" of those who brought it there, 
who *^by changing its former place produced 
it there" ! In a word: the water in the river 
or well is God's coromon gift to all, belonging 
to all ; the water in your cup is your produc- 
tion. — ^Who in the world calls moving a thing 
from one place to another producing that 
thing! Do customers who try on hats in a 
store produce them on their head when they 
put them on? If so, they could keep them 
without paying for them, because ^^they pro- 
duced them there. ' ' This is sheer nonsense ! 
By changing its place you in no wise produce 
an object; it remains what it was before; but 
you give it, or produce, its new position, that 
is all. Hence the title of '^production" can- 



HENRY GEOilGE VS. LEO XIII. 67 

not be applied to the water taken from its 
natural reservoir. 

But can, perhaps, the change in place as 
such effect ownership! Certainly not. 
Otherwise what could hinder me from cov- 
ertly pouring the water from your cup into 
mine and thus making it my private prop- 
erty? By filling your cup with water you 
destroyed the common ownership of all man- 
kind in that water; why should the pouring 
of the same water from your cup into mine 
not destroy your ownership in that water? 
Is the natural and common ownership of 
mankind not a far stronger title than the ac- 
quired ownership of one individual? Hence 
the same action — change of place — should 
be able to destroy the former, stronger, but 
not the second, weaker, title? According to 
Henry George, therefore, water or any other 
creature of God can no more be the private 
property of any one when taken from its 
original place, than it was before. 

Production properly signifies, — bringing 
something into existence or causing it to exist. 
If the production takes place without pre-ex- 
isting matter, we have creation, in the proper 
sense; otherwise we have ordinary produc- 
tion, i. e., a change of something into some- 



68 HENEY GEOEOE VS. LEO XIII. 

thing else. ^'As a producer, man is merely a 
changer, not a creator; God alone creates." 
But a producer man is not by merely changing 
things in place ; he must cause in them some 
new form by which they are now ichat they 
were not before; thus only he causes a new 
being to exist, thus only is he **a producer." 
How, then, does Henry George prove that 
''a producer," in the strict and proper sense, 
acquires private ownership in the ^^ product" 
of his labor, as commonly understood, i. e., 
not only in the new form, but also in the ma- 
terial or substance, of which it consists? 

^^ Since the changes in which man's pro- 
duction consists, inhere in matter so long as 
they persist, the right of private ownership 
attaches the accident to the essence, and gives 
the right of ownership in that natural mate- 
rial in which the labor of production is em- 
bodied." This looks very much like a phil- 
osophical proof. One might even suspect 
it to have been copied from an argument of 
the Encyclical itself. The Pope writes: 
^^The soil when cultivated with labor and 
skill, utterly changes its condition: from be- 
ing wild it becomes productive; from being 
barren, fruitful. That which has thus al- 
tered and improved the land is so closely 
connected and so perfectly identified with 



HENRY GEOEGE VS. LEO XIIL 69 

the same, that for the greatest part it can in 
no wise be separated from it. Now would it 
not be a violation of justice for any one to 
appropriate to himself and enjoy that which 
another has gained in the sweat of his 
browr' 

Snch is the Pope's argument from the na- 
ture of the soil. Put in the short form of 
Mr. Henry George it runs thus: Since the 
changes in which man's production consists, 
e. g., the physical alterations and improve- 
ments of land, inhere in matter, in our case 
in the cultivated land, so long as they persist 
the right of private ownership attaches the 
accidents, the alterations and improvements, 
to the essence, the land, and gives the right 
of ownership in that natural material, the 
soil, in which the labor of production is em- 
bodied. — ^We must thank Mr. George for 
placing the Pope's argument so clearly and 
convincingly before us; thus no one can es- 
cape its cogency. Physical changes in the 
soil that are the result of my labor, are mine, 
and I can claim all the benefit accruing from 
them. But those same changes inseparably 
inhere in the soil and cannot be used without 
using the soil, and no one can use the soil 
without using them. Hence my ownership 
in the changes cannot subsist without owner- 



70 EENEY GEOEGE VS. LEO XIII. 

ship in the soil. Accordingly, to deny me 
the latter is to deny me also the former — is 
to rob me of the fruits of my labor. 

But notwithstanding its simplicity and 
cogency Henry George is bold enough to re- 
ject this argument. He rejects his own proof 
when applied to land, and upholds it when 
applied to water which you carry into the 
desert and so produce it there [!], and to 
ordinary productions in which natural ma- 
terial is used. 

It is evident that this discrimination is 
quite arbitrary and against all logic. Either 
he has to admit the validity of the argument 
in all cases of labor embodied in pre-existing 
matter, or to deny it in all. All things of 
nature are equally the common gift of God 
to all men. There is no difference whatever 
in this respect. But now comes the decisive 
question : how is the original grant of natural 
things by God to all men to be understood? 
Are all things thereby made the common 
property of all men, or are they only objects 
without an actual owner, res nullius, but ap- 
propriable by any one who fulfills the condi- 
tions of appropriation? Henry George 
chooses the first alternative and in this sup- 
position the said argument is invalid in all 
cases of labor embodied in pre-existing mat- 



HENRY GEORaE VS. LEO XIII. 71 

ter; for the exclusive ownership of an indi- 
vidual in the material would rob all other men 
of their natural ownership in the same. 
Plence in his theory there can be no private 
property in any product of labor, which is ab- 
surd. The Pope chooses the other alternative, 
the only reasonable and true one, and in this 
supposition the argument is valid in all cases 
of labor embodied in pre-existing matter, 
whether land or other natural material. 

It seems that Henry George himself had 
some misgivings about his proof of private 
ownership in the products of labor. For 
in the very next paragraph — who would 
deem such a thing possible! — he explicitly 
denies that the private ownership proved by 
him is real oivnership! Here are his words: 
^^But such right of ownership is in reality a 
mere right of temporary possession. For 
though man may take material from the store- 
house of nature and change it in place [ !] or 
form to suit his desires, yet from the moment 
he takes it, it tends back to that storehouse 
again. Wood decays, iron rusts, stone dis- 
integrates and is displaced, while of more 
perishable products, some will last for only a 
few months, others for only a few days, and 
some disappear immediately on use.^' This 
passage shows anew the woeful lack of clear 



72 HENEY GEOEGE VS. LEO XIH. 

ideas and sound principles in the antlior of 
the Open Letter. 

The fact or right of my full ownership in 
some exterior property is one thing, the du- 
ration of my ownership or my property, an- 
other. The second in no way affects the first. 
When I give the object away, when it per- 
ishes, or when I die, I cease to be the owner, 
and the property ceases to be my property; 
before that I am the owner, after that the 
property passes to another owner or returns 
to the storehouse of nature. Henry George 
explicitly grants private ownership in ^^such 
things as buildings, which with repair will 
last for generations;" he will undoubtedly 
also grant it in such as will last so long with- 
out repair ; likewise in the products of labor 
and art which last for thousands of years, 
like the Eoman triumphal arches or the pyr- 
amids of Egypt ; but he will not grant the pri- 
vate ownership of the ground on which such 
buildings or monuments are erected. Is 
this not inconsistent I 

'^5. That private property in land deprives 
no one of the use of land. . . . You say 
in substance, that even though divided among 
private owners the earth does not cease to 
minister to the needs of all, since those who 
do not possess the soil can by selling their 



HENRY GEORGE VS. LEO XIII. 73 

labor obtain in payment the produce of the 
land." 

Nothing is truer and more clearly evident 
than what the Pope says. How does Henry 
George ^^ refute" it? By two illustrations 
which would be to the point only if the earth 
were the common property of mankind or if 
one man or a few men could appropriate a 
whole country by occupancy. Next he calls 
the Pope's attention to the miserable condi- 
tion of various countries with large agricul- 
tural districts, Italy, Roman Britain, the once 
flourishing provinces of the East, Scotland, 
Ireland, the United States, Australia, and 
finally cries out: ^^To the mere materialist 
this is sin and shame. Shall we to whom this 
world is God's world — ^we who hold that man 
is called to this life only as a prelude to a 
higher life — shall we defend it?" As if the 
writer in his Open Letter or elsewhere had 
made it, we would not say certain, but in the 
least probable, that all this universal misery 
is due to the institution of landed property as 
such, and not rather to the iniquities of indi- 
vidual landowners, of speculators in land, of 
possessors of movable capital, and the per- 
verse or deficient legislation of many coun- 
tries where the laws do not check the gravest 
commercial and industrial abuses, by which 



74 HENEY GEOEGE VS. LEO XIII. 

the needy suffer most and the enormously 
rich become richer still ! 

'^4. That industry expended on land gives 
ownership in the land itself.'' — This is the 
Pope's argument taken from the nature of 
the soil and refers to oivnerless land, as all 
land originally was. Since the five pages 
which Mr. George devotes to this head con- 
tain absolutely nothing new, we may at once 
pass to the next. 

^^5. That private property in land has the 
support of the common opinion of mankind^ 
and has conduced to peace and tranquillity, 
and that it is sanctioned hy Divine Laiv. 

^^Even were it true that the common opin- 
ion of mankind has sanctioned private prop- 
erty in land, this would no more prove its 
justice, than the once universal practice of 
the known world would have proved the jus- 
tice of slavery. ' ' 

In ethics a twofold kind of slavery is dis- 
tinguished; one in which the essential rights 
of man as a person and moral being are safe- 
guarded, and the slave is merely bound to 
perpetual service for perpetual support 
(^^famulatus perpetuus pro perpetuis alimen- 
tis") ; the other in which the slave is consid- 
ered and treated as a chattel without rights. 
Although even the former, or mitigated, kind 



HENRY GEORGE VS. LEO XIII. 75 

of slavery is little in harmony with man's 
natural dignity, yet it is not intrinsically and 
absolutely opposed to the natural law. It 
was allowed among the Jews (Levit. xxv, 44- 
46) ; among the heathen nations of the ancient 
world it had gradually become a social neces- 
sity and was lawful ; hence St. Paul ordered 
Christian slaves ^'to obey in all things [their] 
masters according to the flesh'' (Col. iii, 22). 
The second kind, or absolute slavery, is in- 
trinsically and essentially against the natural 
law and was never licit, although it was wide- 
ly practiced among heathen nations and even 
sanctioned by their laws. But neither kind 
of slavery can claim that universality in time 
and space which the system of private land- 
ownership can. Historically, the latter can 
be traced back to the cradle of the human 
race; it is found as a lasting institution 
among all civilized nations; now and then 
there occurs an instance of collective prop- 
erty in land; it is always with peoples who 
have no fixed habitation or with tribes still 
on a low stage of culture; but as soon as 
they give up their roving mode of life or when 
they advance to a higher stage of civilization, 
the system of common ownership is gradually 
supplanted by the introduction of private 
property in land.^ 

1 Cf. H. Pesch, 1. c, pp. 225-235. 



76 HENRY GEORGE VS. LEO XIII. 

^^As to private property in land having 
conduced to the peace and tranqnillity of hu- 
man life, it is not necessary nopre than to al- 
lude to the notorious fact that the struggle 
for land has been the prolific source of wars 
and of lawsuits, while it is the poverty engen- 
dered by private property in land [?] that 
makes the prison and the workhouse the un- 
failing attributes of what we call Christian 
civilization. ' ' 

Could we not ^^ allude" likewise to the no- 
torious fact that the struggle for political 
dominion or sovereignty has been the 
^^ source" of numberless wars, and private 
property in objects different from land the 
^^ source" of countless lawsuits? In reality, 
however, it is not political sovereignty, or 
private property in land or chattels, that is 
the source of so much strife among nations 
or individuals, but the wickedness and greed 
of men who do not respect the rights of 
others, nations or individuals. Honest men 
will respect the rights of their fellow-men, 
and where the rights of individuals or pri- 
vate societies are not respected, the higher 
power of authority must step in to procure 
for each his dues. Were there no rights of 
private property, there would be no viola- 
tions or wrongs either. Every one, there- 



HENRY GEORGE VS. LEO XIII. 77 

fore, could without injustice deal with his 
neighbor's so-called ''possessions" as he 
pleased. The weaker would be at the mercy 
of the stronger and no one could complain 
or protest that he was wronged. Where 
there are no rights, there are no wrongs ! 
The rights of property, however, being done 
away with, man's greediness is not done away 
with, but remains and is the more excited 
as there are, in that supposition, no opposing 
claims of justice to check its excesses. 

''Your Holiness intimates that the Divine 
Law gives its sanction to the private owner- 
ship of land, quoting from Deuteronomy, 
* Thou shalt not covet, etc. ' If, as your Holi- 
ness conveys, this inclusion of the words, 'nor 
his field,' is to be taken as sanctioning pri- 
vate property in land as it exists to-day, — 
[we suppose that Henry George does not 
mean to include in this phrase, which he uses 
repeatedly, the particular cases of fraud on 
the part of individual proprietors] — then, 
but with far greater force, must the words, 
^his man-servant, nor his maid-servant,' be 
taken to sanction chattel slavery [mitigated 
slavery, viz., where it lawfully existed and as 
long as it was not abolished] ; for it is evident 
from other provisions of the same code that 
these terms referred both to bondsmen for 



78 HENEY GEOEGE VS. LEO XIII. 

a term of years or to perpetual slaves [mit- 
igated slavery]. But the word Afield' in- 
volves the idea of use and improvement, 
to which the right of possession and owner- 
ship does attach without recognition of prop- 
erty in the land itself. And that this refer- 
ence to the Afield' is not a sanction of private 
property in land as it exists to-day [ !] is 
proved by the fact that the Mosaic code ex- 
pressly denied such unqualified ownership in 
land, and with the declaration, ^the land also 
shall not be sold for ever, because it is mine, 
and you are strangers and sojourners with 
me,^ provided for its reversion every fiftieth 
year ; thus, in a way adapted to the primitive 
industrial conditions of the time, securing to 
all of the chosen people a foothold in the 
soil." 

Here our Agrarian Socialist gives his Holi- 
ness, Pope Leo XIIL, ^^the head of the larg- 
est body of Christians," a practical lecture on 
exegetics! And he is. clever enough to find 
in the text of Moses just what he wants. The 
word ^' field," he says, involves the idea of 
use and improvement. But, our learned ex- 
egete forgets that the same word "field" in- 
volves before and above everything else the 
soil. Moreover, he forgets that the word 
*^his" involves and designates individual 



HENRY GEOEGE VS. LEO XIII. 79 

ownersliip and that, consequently, the com- 
bination ^^his field" designates nothing else 
than the much dreaded private ownership of 
the soil. In fact, only he who owns the land 
or soil can call the field '^his;" one who has 
merely rented a farm, can not call it ^^his." 
In the Henry George theory, however, ^^the 
individual possessor of a particular piece 
or tract of land is in reality nothing more 
than a tenant of the State or the community. ' ' 
Hence the words of Deuteronomy *^nor his 
field,'' denote not merely possession or usu- 
fruct in opposition to property in land, but 
real property or ownership in land, just as 
the words ^^nor his house," *^nor his ox, nor 
his ass, nor anything else which is his," sig- 
nify real property or ownership. 

The declaration of the Mosaic law, '^The 
land also shall not be sold for ever: because 
it is mine, and you are strangers and so- 
journers with me" (Levit. xxv, 23), means 
nothing but a prohibition of selling landed 
property. An Israelite could lease his land 
or sell the usufruct up to the next ^^year of 
the jubilee, ' ' but he could never sell the prop- 
erty in land itself. The land in each case 
belonged always, not to the whole of '^the 
chosen people," but to the particular family 
to which it had been given at the first distri- 



80 HENRY GEORGE VS. LEO XIII. 

bution after the conquest of Palestine. 
Whatever land had been ^ ^ sold, " i. e. leased, 
had to be returned every fiftieth year. ' ' And 
thou shalt sanctify the fiftieth year, and shalt 
proclaim remission to all the inhabitants of 
thy land; for it is the year of the jubilee. 
Every man shall return to his possession, 
and every one shall go back to his former 
family. ... In the year of the jubilee 
all shall return to their possessions. . . . 
For in that year all that is sold shall return 
to the owner and to the ancient possessor." 
(Levit. XXV, 10, 13, 28.) 

The landed property among the Israelites 
was not common but private, though by spe- 
cial provision of the law inalienable and 
transferable only by inheritance. *^ Com- 
mand the children of Israel and say to them : 
When you shall have passed over the Jordan, 
entering into the land of Chanaan, destroy 
all the inhabitants of that land. . . . And 
you shall divide it among you by lot. . . . 
To every one as the lot shall fall, so shall 
the inheritance be given. The possession 
shall be divided by the tribes and the fam- 
ilies" (Num. xxxiii, 51-54). Special regula- 
tions were enacted concerning marriage, ^ ' lest 
the possessions of the children of Israel be 
mingled from tribe to tribe . . . that the 



HENRY GEORGE VS. LEO XIII. 81 

inheritance may remain in the families, and 
that the tribes be not mingled one with an- 
other, but remain so as they were separated 
by the Lord" (Num. xxxvi, 7-10). 

The Israelites were trnly ^^the chosen peo- 
ple,'' the people of divine predilection, and 
God was in a particular sense their Lord 
and God. Of this He wished them to be al- 
ways mindfnl; therefore He reminded them 
frequently that the land which they should 
possess was the land which was His own, 
which He had promised to their fathers, 
which He would give them, to each family, 
as it were, in particular, by a special dis- 
position of His, viz., ^^by lot." A positive 
and explicit grant by God is certainly a law- 
ful title of full and complete ownership. But 
we must remember that God grants His gifts 
differently than man. What God grants or 
gives to man, remains His as before, whilst 
what one man gives to another, does not re- 
main his. God is and remains necessarily 
the Lord of all things, of the earth and all 
its treasures, as well as of man and all he 
has or acquires in any manner whatsoever. 
Nevertheless man really owns whatever he 
owns; but what he owns, is his own, not as 
against the Lord and Creator of all things, 
but ''as against all the world." 

6 



82 HENEY GEORGE VS. LEO XIII. 

In connection with the Mosaic code, it is 
to be noted that private property in land 
existed long before the Jewish lawgiver. 
The Israelites had met with it in Egypt, 
where it can be traced back several cen- 
turies before Abraham; later on they found 
it in Assyria and Babylonia, where it can 
likewise be shown to have existed from the 
earliest times. True, the Decalogue, as pro- 
mulgated by Moses, had the force of a 
*^ positive divine law" for the Jews only, 
but they were bound to observe it towards 
all nations with whom they came in contact. 
Moreover, although the whole Mosaic code 
ceased with the introduction of the new 
law, the ten commandments, with the excep- 
tion of some details evidently intended only 
for ^^the chosen people" as such, were re- 
newed by Christ and form part of the new 
law, which is to last to the end of time. Ac- 
cordingly, what Leo XIII. maintains is per- 
fectly true, viz., private property in land 
''has been sanctioned by the authority of the 
divine law." The doctrine, therefore, de- 
claring individual landownership to be mor- 
ally wrong and unjust, is not only opposed 
to reason, but also to divine revelation. 

After the passage quoted above from his 
Open Letter, Henry George continues as fol- 



HENRY GEORGE VS. LEO XIII. 83 

lows : ' ' Nowhere in fact throughout the 
Scriptures can the slightest justification be 
found for the attaching to land of the same 
right of property that justly attaches to the 
things produced by labor. Everywhere is 
it treated as the free bounty of God, 'the 
land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.' " 
The audacity of this assertion is amazing. 
The following texts need no comment. Our 
Lord said to St. Peter: ^' Every one that 
hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or 
father, or mother, or wife, or children, or 
lands for my name's sake: shall receive an 
hundred-fold, and shall possess life everlast- 
ing." (Matth. xix, 29). In the Acts we read 
of the first Christians: ''As many as were 
owners of lands or houses sold them, and 
brought the price of the things they sold, and 
laid it down before the feet of the Apostles. 
. . . And Joseph, . . . having land, 
sold it, and brought the price. . . . But 
a certain man named Ananias, with Saphira, 
his wife, sold a piece of land, and by fraud 
kept back part of the price of the land. 
. . . But Peter said : Ananias, why hath 
Satan tempted thy heart, that thou shouldst 
. . . by fraud keep part of the price of the 
land? Whilst it [the land] remained [un- 
sold], did it not remain to thee? and after 



84 HENEY GEOEGE VS. LEO XIII. 

it was sold, was it [the price] not in thy 
power [at thy free disposal] ? Why hast 
thou conceived this thing in thy heart T' 
(Acts iv, 34-37; v, 1-4). 

In these passages private property in land 
is represented and declared as lawful, though 
divesting one's self of it for God's sake is 
described as an act of superior virtue. 
Hence the contrary doctrine has always been 
considered heretical. 

^^6. That fathers should provide for their 
children and that private property in land is 
necessary to enable them to do so. 

''With all that your Holiness has to say 
of the sacredness of the family relation we 
are in full accord. But how the obligation 
of the father to the child can justify private 
property in land we cannot see." 

We have here a sad case of color-blind- 
ness. Henry George cannot see what the 
Pontitf has made so clear by his argument; 
on the other hand, he sees things in the 
papal text which are not there at all. To 
begin with the former, the Pope starts from 
the principle that the family, with its es- 
sential duties and rights, is an institution 
of nature, i. e., of God by the natural law. 
Eights flow from duties. Now what is the 
duty of a father? ''It is a most sacred 



HENRY GEORGE VS. LEO XIII. 85 

natural law that a father must provide food 
and all the necessaries for those whom he has 
begotten." This is his strict duty. But his 
natural love for his offspring urges him to 
do more, to secure their welfare, so far as 
in him lies, also in the future. ^' And simi- 
larly nature dictates that a man's children, 
who carry on, as it were, and continue his 
own personality, should be provided by him 
with all that is needful to enable them honor- 
ably to keep themselves from want and mis- 
ery in the uncertainties of this mortal life." 
This is the text of the translation which Mr. 
George used. The original of the Encyclical 
does not say: ^^ nature dictates," but: '^be- 
sides, nature herself instills in him also the 
desire — idemque (paterfamilias) illuc a 
natura ipsa deducitur, ut velit liberis suis 
. . . anquirere et parare, unde, etc. — 
to provide for the future of his children 
. . . so as to enable them, etc." ^^Now 
in no other way can a father effect this ex- 
cept by the ownership of profitable property, 
which he can transmit to his children by in- 
heritance. ' ' 

What a pity that Henry George cannot 
see the conclusiveness of this fine argument. 
How could fathers of families provide the 
necessaries of life if none could own even 



86 HENEY GEOEGE VS. LEO XIII. 

the least portion of the large storehouse 
of nature, which alone, assisted indeed by 
man's constant care and toil, can afford for 
ever-recurring needs never-failing supplies? 
And what would become of their authority 
and dignity as the God-appointed rulers and 
chief managers of their households, if in 
the necessaries of life — all of which are 
ultimately drawn from ^^the earth with its 
abundance and fertility" — they would es- 
sentially depend on the universal landowner, 
the State, and the State's officials? As re- 
gards the further desire, so natural in a 
father, of providing for his offspring a se- 
cure and honorable existence in the future 
when he will have been taken from them, it 
must certainly be right and lawful to satisfy 
such a noble desire, and there must be means 
to fulfill it. But which are these means ex- 
cept ^^ profitable property [in land] which 
one can transmit to his children by inherit- 
ance"? An economic condition of society, 
therefore, in which only a comparatively 
small number of fathers are, or can be, 
actual owners of landed property is far from 
being the normal condition intended for man- 
kind by the natural law; but a social ar- 
rangement which precludes all heads of 
families from becoming landed proprietors 



HENRY GEORGE VS. LEO XIII. 87 

is directly ''against natural justice and 
menaces the very existence of family life." 

While alas ! Henry George can not perceive 
the force in this argument of the Pope, he 
sees on the other hand, several things in 
it which no one else can find. He sees that 
the teaching of Leo XIII. is against the 
* ' Our Father " ! He writes : 

*^We do, for a few years, need the provi- 
dence of our fathers after the flesh. But 
how small, how transient, how narrow is 
this need, as compared with our constant 
need of the providence of Him in whom we 
live, move and have our being — Our Father 
who art in Heaven ! It is to Him, ' the giver 
of every good and perfect gift' and not to 
our fathers after the flesh, that Christ taught 
us to pray, 'Give us this day our daily 
bread.' . . . What your Holiness is 
actually, though of course inadvertently, 
urging, is that earthly fathers should as- 
sume the functions of the Heavenly Father. 
It is not the business of one generation 
to provide the succeeding generation with 
'all that is needful to enable them honor- 
ably to keep themselves from want and 
misery.' That is God's business. We no 
more create our children than we create our 
fathers." [!!] 



88 HENRY GEOEGE VS. LEO XIII. 

He sees, besides, that the Pope, ' ' of course 
inadvertently," urges '^the robbery of 
others/^ ^^The profitable property your 
Holiness refers to, is private property in 
land. Now profitable land, as all economists 
will agree, is land superior to the land that 
the ordinary man can get. [ !] It is land 
that will yield an income to the owner as 
owner, and therefore that will permit the 
owner to appropriate the products of labor 
without doing labor, its profitableness to the 
individual involving the robbery of other 
individuals. [ ! !] It is therefore possible 
only for some fathers to leave their children 
profitable land. What therefore your Holi- 
ness practically declares is, that it is the 
duty of all fathers to struggle to leave their 
children what only the few peculiarly strong, 
lucky or unscrupulous can leave; and that, 
a something that involves the robbery of 
others — their deprivation of the material 
gifts of God. This anti-Christian doctrine 
has been long in practice throughout the 
Christian world. What are its results! etc., 
etc." [!!] 

Towards the end of his letter Mr. George 
even adds the charge of practical atheism. 
'*What is the prayer of Christendom — the 
universal prayer . . . that is repeated 



HENRY GEORGE VS. LEO XIII. 89 

by the youngest child that the poorest Chris- 
tian mother has taught to lisp a request to 
her Father in Heaven? It is ^Give us this 
day our daily bread!' Yet where this 
prayer goes up, daily and hourly, men lack 
bread. Is it not the business of religion to 
say why? If it cannot do so, shall not 
scoffers mock its ministers as Elias mocked 
the prophets of Baal. ... What answer 
can those ministers give? . . . Here is 
the answer, the only true answer: If men 
lack bread it is not that God has not done 
His part in providing it. . . . It is, that 
impiously violating the benevolent intentions 
of their Creator, men have made land pri- 
vate property, and thus given into the ex- 
clusive ownership of the few the provision 
that a bountiful Father has made for all. 
Any other answer than that, no matter how 
it may be shrouded in the mere forms 
of religion, is practically an atheistical 
answer." [ !!] 

^^7. Thai the private oivnership of land 
stimulates industry, increases luealth, and 
attaches men to the soil and to their coun- 
try/' This sentence refers to a passage in 
the second part of the Encyclical, where the 
Pope says: ^'We have seen that this great 
labor question can not be solved except by 



90 HENEY GEOEGE VS. LEO XIII. 

assuming as a principle that private owner- 
ship [in land] must be held sacred and in- 
violate. The law, therefore, should favor 
ownership, and its policy should be to in- 
duce as many of the people as possible to 
become oivners. Many excellent results will 
follow from this; and first of all, property 
will certainly become more equally divided. 
. . . Another consequence will be the 
greater abundance of the fruits of the earth. 
Men always work harder and more readily 
when they work on that which is their own; 
nay, they learn to love the very soil. . . . 
And a third advantage would arise from 
this ; men would cling to the country in which 
they were born . . ." 

Against the three points contained in the 
heading Henry George has nothing to say. 
But he thinks the advantages of the Single 
Tax system would be far greater, in par- 
ticular the security of the products of labor 
and the permanence of landed possession. 
In another chapter we shall demonstrate 
the injustice of the single tax as a system of 
taxation. Suffice it to remind our Agrarian 
economist, that in his theory all holders of 
land are mere tenants of the State ; they are, 
therefore, at the mercy of this universal 
landlord, who can change the tenants from 



HENRY GEORGE VS. LEO XIII. 91 

one place to another by a simple decree of 
the party in power, just as the holders of 
State offices are now changed from time to 
time. 

''8. That the right to possess private 
property in land is from nature, not from 
man; that the State has no right to abolish it, 
and that to take the value of landoivnership 
in taxation would he unjust and cruel to 
landowners.' ' 

This chapter is nothing but a repetition of 
former assertions pins a new encomium of the 
Single Tax. We might call it a summary of 
what has preceded. ' ' That private property 
in the products of labor is from nature, is 
clear, for nature gives such things to labor 
and to labor alone. Of every article of this 
kind, we know that it came into being as 
nature's response to the exertion of an indi- 
vidual man or of individual men — given by 
nature directly and exclusively to him or to 
them. . . . But who will dare trace the 
individual ownership of land to any grant 
from the Maker of land? What does nature 
give to such ownership! How does she in 
any way recognize it? Will anyone show 
from difference of form or feature, of stature 
or complexion, from dissection of their bodies 
or analysis of their powers and needs, that 



92 HENRY GEORGE VS. LEO XIII. 

one man was intended by nature to own land 
and another to live on it as Ms tenant!" 
This is a naive way of hiding one 's ignorance. 
Let ns recapitulate the true origin of 
private property. The right of property 
is the right of having an exterior object com- 
pletely and exclusively for one's own use, 
so as to be able to dispose of it fully and in- 
dependently of others. It implies, there- 
fore, a special connection between a partic- 
ular object and an individual person or in- 
dividual persons. Now by nature no such 
special connection exists, all things being 
per se and a priori ownerless. How, then, 
does actual ownership arise? It arises in 
each case from a concrete fact. In the case 
of objects which are as yet without an owner, 
this fact is occupancy or occupation. Occu- 
pancy is the taking hold of an ownerless 
object with the express intention of holding 
it as one's own. This intention is expressed 
by marking the object so as to distinguish 
it from others not appropriated. Such ways 
of ^^ marking" are manifold, according to 
the nature of the objects, e. g., keeping some- 
thing about one's person or in one's house; 
with regard to land, fencing it in, but 
especially physical changes by improvements 
or cultivation. All appropriation by occu- 



HENRY GEORGE VS. LEO XIII. 93 

pancy is by the very nature of this act limited 
and may be further restricted by positive 
laws. Transfers of property from one 
owner to another take place by donation, 
bequests, and various contracts. All these 
methods and transactions imply the activity 
of man and are dependent on various essen- 
tial conditions and the just laws of civil 
authority. Hence we can say with Leo XIII. 
that, whilst by nature material goods are 
neither owned by mankind at large nor by 
individual men, ^'the actual distribution of 
private possessions," in immovables as well 
as movables, is effected ^^by men's industry 
and according to the laws of peoples." So 
much for the objections of Henry George 
against the arguments advanced in the En- 
cyclical. 

In his Open Letter Mr. George aims to 
disabuse the Pope of his ''one false and 
fatal assumption," the justice of individual 
landownership. ''If your Holiness will con- 
sider these things we are confident that in- 
stead of defending private property in land 
you will condemn it with anathema!" "In 
sending [this letter] to you personally and 
in advance of publication, I trust that it may 
be by you personally read and weighed. 
. . . I trust that the considerations herein 



94 HENRY GEORGE VS. LEO XIII. 

set forth may induce you [to question the 
views hitherto held by you], and even if the 
burdens and cares that beset you shall now 
make impossible the careful consideration 
that should precede expression by one in 
your responsible position [!], I trust that 
what I have written may not be without use 
to others." Finally, ''Wishing for your 
Holiness the chiefest of all blessings, that 
you may know the truth and be freed by 
the truth, . . . and with the profound re- 
spect due to your personal character and to 
your exalted office, I am, Yours sincerely, 
Heistey George. New York, September 11, 
1891." 

Henry George believed that his letter made 
a deep impression on Leo XIII. and that it 
had attained its purpose. This we learn 
from a communication approvingly quoted 
by the Neiv York Freeman's Journal^ Janu- 
ary 23, 1904. ''In answering a correspond- 
ent of the New York Sun, in January, 1893, 
he [Mr. George] said: 'That the Encyclical 
on the Condition of Labor seemed to me to 
condemn the Single Tax theory is true. 
But it made it clear that the Pope did not 
rightly understand that theory. It was for 
this reason that in the open letter to which 
your correspondent refers, I asked permis- 



HENRY GEORGE VS. LEO XIII. 95 

sion to lay before the Pope the grounds of 
our belief and to show that ^our postulates 
are all stated or implied in your Encyclical/ 
and that Hhey are the primary perceptions 
of human reason, the fundamental teachings 
of the Christian faith;' declaring that so 
far from avoiding, ^we earnestly seek the 
judgment of religion, the tribunal of which 
your Holiness, as the head of the largest 
body of Christians, is the most august repre- 
sentative.' The answer has come. In the 
reinstatement of Dr. McGlynn, on a correct 
presentation of Single Tax doctrines, the 
highest authority of the Catholic Church [ ! !] 
has declared in the most emphatic manner 
that there is nothing in them inconsistent 
with Catholic faith." 

Dr. Edward McGlynn 's case will be con- 
sidered separately in the light of docu- 
mentary evidence. Had Mr. George's Open 
Letter, with its flimsy objections and numer- 
ous absurdities, brought about a change in 
the Pope's mind and made him renounce 
the teaching of his magnificent Encyclical 
^^Rerum No varum," verily this '^conver- 
sion" of Leo XIII. to the Single Tax theory 
would have been one of the most sensational 
events in the history of the papacy. 



VI. 



TEM OF TAXATION 



The Henry George theory of landowner- 
ship has its practical application in the so- 
called ^^ Single Tax." The former is the 
necessary scientific basis of the latter. 
Single Tax men take a particular pride not 
only in having simplified, or rather sup- 
planted, the complicated and expensive 
methods of taxation hitherto in vogue, but 
especially also in having discovered the only 
method that is based on nature and that 
therefore may rightly be called ^^ natural 
taxation" or the '^natural tax.'' However, 
since the scientific basis of this much vaunted 
** natural tax" has been shown, in a previous 
chapter, to be philosophically false, the 
^^ natural tax" itself can not but be a mere 
phantom of the imagination, like the theory 
from which it springs. 

The following extracts from Mr. George's 
Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII. will give the 
96 



THE SINGLE TAX 97 

reader the gist of his luminous and eloquent 
exposition of the subject: 

^^We propose, leaving land in the private 
possession [without ownership] of indi- 
viduals, with full liberty on their part to 
give, sell or bequeath it, simply to levy on 
it for public uses a tax that shall equal the 
annual value of the land itself, irrespective 
of the use made of it or the improvements 
made upon it. And since this would provide 
amply for the need of public revenues, we 
would accompany this tax on land values 
with the repeal of all taxes now levied on 
the products and processes of industry — 
which taxes, since they take from the earn- 
ings of labor, we hold to be infringements 
of the right of property. "... 

^^No sooner does the State arise than, as 
we all know, it needs revenues. . . . 
With the growth of population and advance 
of civilization the functions of the State in- 
crease and larger and larger revenues are 
needed. Now, He that made the world and 
placed man in it. He that preordained civil- 
ization as the means whereby man might rise 
to higher powers and become more and more 
conscious of the works of his Creator, must 
have foreseen the increasing need for State 
revenues and have made provision for it. 



98 THE SINGLE TAX 

That is to say: tlie increasing need for pub- 
lic revenues with social advance, being 
a natural, God-ordained need, there must be 
a right way of raising them — some way that 
we can truly say is the way intended by God. 
It is clear that this right way of raising 
public revenues must accord with the moral 
law. 

' ' Hence : It must not take from individuals 
what rightfully belongs to individuals" — 
in other words: a rightful tax can not be 
one which is to be paid from the individual's 
rightful property or from his own pocket! 
Why not % Because ^ ' God can not contradict 
Himself nor impose on His creatures laws 
that clash. If it be [therefore] God's com- 
mand to men that they should not steal — 
that is to say, that they should respect the 
right of property which each one has in the 
fruits of his labor;" God can not have or- 
dained that men should be deprived of part 
of their earnings or of their money in order 
to enable the State to carry on its various 
functions. But that is the case in ^^all taxes 
now levied on the products and processes 
of industry." Therefore we hear Henry 
George declare that he holds all those taxes, 
'^ since they take from the earnings of 



THE SINGLE TAX 99 

labor," to be unjust, ''to be infringements 
of the right of property ! " 

This is a precious bit of modern eco- 
nomics! When the Single Tax system will 
once have been established, you will have 
to pay taxes, but not from your own money. 
And on the same principle that ' ' God can not 
contradict Himself," you will have to pay 
your physician in case of sickness, but never 
from your own pocket. Also your tailor, 
your baker, your grocer, etc., must not expect 
to be paid from your own money, since this 
would be an ''infringement of the right of 
property." In the new era every one will 
always and everywhere "respect the right 
of property which each one has in the fruits 
of his labor"! 

Henry George continues: "To consider 
what we propose — the raising of public reve- 
nues by a single tax on the value of land ir- 
respective of improvements — is to see that 
in all respects this does conform to the moral 
law. Let me ask your Holiness to keep in 
mind that the value we propose to tax, the 
value of land irrespective of improvements, 
does not come from any exertion of labor or 
investment of capital on or in it — the values 
produced in this way being values of im- 



100 THE SINGLE TAX 

provements which we would exempt. The 
value of land irrespective of improvement 
is the value that attaches to land by reason 
of increasing population or social progress. 
This is a value that always goes to the owner 
as owner, and never does and never can go 
to the user; for if the user be a different 
person from the owner he must always pay 
the owner for it in rent or in purchase 
money; while if the user be also the owner, 
it is as owner, not as user, that he receives 
it, and by selling [ ?] or renting the land he 
can, as owner, continue to receive it after 
he ceases to be a user. 

^'Thus, taxes on land irrespective of im- 
provement can not lessen the reward of 
industry, nor add to prices, nor in any way 
take from the individual what belongs to the 
individual. [That would be downright rob- 
bery!] They can only take the value that 
attaches to land by the growth of the com- 
munity, and which therefore belongs to the 
community as a whole. 

^'To take land values for the State, abol- 
ishing all taxes on the products of labor, 
would therefore leave to the laborer the full 
produce of labor, to the individual all that 
rightfully belongs to the individual/' 

This passage contains the whole justifi- 



THE SINGLE TAX 101 

cation Henry George can give and does give 
for the Single Tax. The land value is justly 
collected as a tax from every ^ ^possessor and 
user" of land for two reasons: (1.) because 
the land value always goes to the owner as 
such; now the State or the community as 
such, not the individual, is the real owner of 
the land ; hence the land value must go to the 
community or State; (2.) the land value does 
not come from labor or from investment of 
capital, but arises merely from the growth 
of the community and from social progress; 
hence it belongs by right to the community 
or State. With these two reasons the Single 
Tax stands or falls. Here we have the cru- 
cial test. 

The importance of this point, we think, 
will justify our adding to the quotations 
already given the following passages from 
Progress and Poverty. 

In Book VII., ch. III. (p. 262), Henry 
George, having cited these sentences from 
John Stuart Mill: ^^The land of Ireland, the 
land of every country, belongs to the people 
of that country. The individuals called land- 
owners have no right in morality and justice 
to anything but the rent, or compensation 
for its salable value ' ' — exclaims indignantly : 
*'In the name of the Prophet — figs! If the 



102 THE SINGLE TAX 

land of any country belong to the people of 
that country, what right, in morality and 
justice, have the individuals called land- 
owners to the rent? If the land belong to 
the people, why in the name of morality and 
justice should the people pay its salable 
value for their own?" 

Equally emphatic is his answer to the 
author of the ^'synthetic philosophy.'' — 
'^Herbert Spencer says: ^Had we to deal 
with the parties who originally robbed the 
human race of its heritage, we might make 
short work of the matter.' Why not make 
short work of the matter anyhow? For this 
robbery is not like the robbery of a horse or 
of a sum of money, that ceases with the act. 
It is a fresh and continuous robbery, that 
goes on every day and every hour. . . . 
It is not merely a robbery in the past; it is 
a robbery in the present — a robbery that 
deprives of their birth-right the infants that 
are now coming into the world ! Why should 
we hesitate about making short work of such 
a system? ... If the land belong to the 
people, why continue to permit landowners 
to take the rent, or compensate them in any 
manner for the loss of rent ? Consider what 
rent is. It does not arise spontaneously 
from land ; it is due to nothing that the land- 



THE SINGLE TAX 103 

owners have done. It represents a value 
created by the whole commnnity. Let the 
landholders have, if you please, all that the 
possession of the land would give them in 
the absence of the rest of the community. 
But rent, the creation of the whole com- 
munity, necessarily belongs to the whole 
community. ' ' 

Let us now consider the two reasons ad- 
vanced by Mr. George with such eloquence 
and fervor. 

First, he argues : If the land of a country 
belongs to the people, the community of that 
country, then the land value necessarily 
must go to the community of that country; 
this value always goes to the owner as such. 
Very good. But this ^4f'* is not verified. 
To maintain, as Mr. George does, that the 
land of a country belongs to the people of 
that country as a whole, and not to the indi- 
viduals who have by some title or other ac- 
quired parts of it, is false. 

As to the second reason: the land value is 
not the product of the individual's labor or 
investment of capital — ^we readily grant the 
statement; but permit us to ask: Is it the 
product of the community's labor or invest- 
ment of capital? Evidently it is not; it 
arises, as our economist himself says, from 



104 THE SINGLE TAX 

the growth of the community and from social 
progress. 

The land value of which there is question 
here, is not an inherent physical quality of 
the land, which makes it better or more fer- 
tile and consequently more desirable or more 
valuable. Hence it is not and need not be 
produced by the forces of nature nor by any 
kind of labor. The object being given, its 
increasing or decreasing value is consequent 
upon certain extrinsic circumstances, in some- 
what the same way as a good, substantial 
meal has a greater ^Walue'' for a hungry 
man than for one having little or no appe- 
tite. The meal has a producer, but not its 
value as such; the latter supposes merely an 
empty stomach. 

The actual value (exchange value) of an 
object is nothing else than its fitness or ca- 
pacity of being exchanged for other useful 
objects. This springs directly from the gen- 
eral estimation of men based on the useful- 
ness of the object to satisfy some want or 
desire, and on the greater or lesser difficulty 
of obtaining it.^) Suppose a community in 
a certain stage of civilization, and you have 

1 Cf. A. Vermeerseh, S.J., Quaestioneg de Justitia. 1901. 
N. 336. "Vera ratio valoris." 



THE SINGLE TAX 105 

ipso facto certain needs and desires in that 
community which are to be satisfied. Now 
suppose, besides, various goods capable of 
satisfying those wants and desires, and also 
certain facilities of communication and of in- 
tercourse which make the exchange of dif- 
ferent objects in that community feasible; 
then, without any further exertion, labor or 
production, the various useful objects, 
whether merchandise or real estate, will, by 
common estimation, possess a certain ex- 
change value; and this value will for the 
selfsame unchanged object vary, decrease 
or increase according as the extrinsic cir- 
cumstances vary. To whom, then, does 
the exchange value of such an object be- 
long! Evidently to nobody else but the 
owner of that object. Being really and 
truly the owner of the object, of the entire 
object, he owns it with all that is in it, 
whether actually or potentially; he owns it 
with all its usefulness to satisfy the needs 
and desires of the owner himself, i. e., with 
its ^^use value"; he owns it with all its ca- 
pacity of obtaining by exchange some other 
good, i. e., with its '^exchange value." The 
exchange value no less than the use value 
belongs in justice to the owner of the object ; 



106 THE SINGLE TAX 

lie enjoys all the advantage in case of an in- 
crease, as he has to bear all the ensuing dis- 
advantage in case of a decrease. 

This common sense answer does not fit 
into the arbitrary systems of ^'modern econ- 
omists/' bnt it is sound philosophy for all 
that. It is bnt an application of the saying, 
*^Res fructificat domino," which is a maxim 
of natural as well as of positive jurispru- 
dence. He who denies the owner of an ob- 
ject its exchange value, denies his right of 
ownership. For what does it mean to say: 
'^This object, e. g., this bicycle, belongs to 
me." It means, according to all men, that 
he who can truly say so, has the full, free, 
and exclusive right of disposing of it, and 
that he can, independently of all others, en- 
joy the advantages that result for him from 
such disposal or use. He may ride on his bi- 
cycle for the sake of exercise; he may shut 
it up in a store-room ; he may give it away as 
a present; he may also, if he chooses, ex- 
change it for some other useful object. If 
he makes such an exchange, that which he 
thus acquires becomes as truly and completely 
his, as was the object with which he parted. 
To deprive him, therefore, of the whole or 
of a part of the object acquired, would man- 
ifestly be an infringement of the right of 



THE SINGLE TAX 107 

property, and to deny him the right to the 
whole benefit of the exchange, would in re- 
ality be to deny or destroy his right of 
ownership. 

Hence it is that mankind's natural sense 
of justice applies this principle constantly 
to every species of property. Take a horse 
dealer who owns two hundred fine horses. 
Suppose from some cause or other the price 
of these animals rises; then his gain, which 
all acknowledge to be truly his, will perhaps 
be twice as large as it would have been under 
ordinary circumstances. The owner of a 
dairy farm will with the same amount of 
work make greater or smaller gains accord- 
ing as the price of milk, butter, and cheese 
rises or falls. The exchange value is an eco- 
nomical growth, ^'increment'' or fruit of the 
object; it belongs, therefore, to the owner 
of the object no less than the natural fruit 
of a tree belongs to the owner of the tree. 
The ownership of an object and the owner- 
ship of its fruit are inseparably connected. 
In order to be logically justified in denying 
the right to the land value, one must neces- 
sarily deny the ownership of the land; and 
in order justly to claim the land value for 
the community, he must necessarily declare 
the community to be the universal landlord. 



108 THE SINGLE TAX 

This Henry George understood and he was 
sincere enough to state it publicly. Hence 
his bold declaration in Progress and Poverty: 
"If private property in land be just, then is 
the remedy I propose a false one; if, on the 
contrary, private property in land be unjust, 
then is this remedy the true one." 

But Henry George not only maintains that 
'^confiscating rent" is in accordance with the 
moral law; he goes still farther. He holds 
it to be the God-intended way of raising 
the necessary revenues of the State, and sees, 
moreover, in the natural provision of this 
never-failing source of public revenue an ad- 
mirable proof of the divine wisdom and good- 
ness on behalf of mankind. Let us listen, for 
a few moments, to his enthusiastic expatia- 
tions in the Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII.: 

''But, further: that God has intended the 
State to obtain the revenues it needs by the 
taxation of land values is shown by the same 
order and degree of evidence that shows that 
God has intended the milk of the mother for 
the nourishment of the babe. [ ! !] . See how 
close is the analogy. . . . See how with 
the growth of such [large] cities the one 
thing that steadily increases in value is land ; 
how the opening of roads, the building of 
railways, the making of any public improve- 



THE SINGLE TAX 109 

ment, adds to the value of land. Is it not 
clear that here is a natural law — that is to 
say a tendency willed by the Creator? Can 
it mean anything else than that He who or- 
dained the State with its needs has in the val- 
ues which attach to land provided the means 
to meet those needs? . . . 

^^The Eight Eeverend Dr. Thomas Nulty, 
Bishop of Meath, who sees all this as clearly 
as we do, in pointing out to the clergy and 
laity of his diocese [April 2nd, 1881] the de- 
sign of Divine Providence that the rent of 
land should be taken for the community, says : 
^I think, therefore, that I may fairly infer, 
on the strength of authority as well as of 
reason, that the people are and always must 
be the real owners of the land of their coun- 
try. [The philosophically false and theolog- 
ically heretical doctrine of common (na- 
tional) land ownership!] This great social 
fact appears to me to be of incalculable im- 
portance. . . . There is, moreover, a 
charm and a peculiar beauty in the clearness 
with which it reveals the wisdom and benevo- 
lence of the designs of Providence in the ad- 
mirable provision He has made for the wants 
and the necessities of that state of social 
existence of which He is author. ... A 
vast public property, a great national fund, 



110 THE SINGLE TAX 

has been placed under the dominion and at 
the disposal of the nation to supply itself 
abundantly with resources necessary to liqui- 
date the expenses of its government, the ad- 
ministration of its laws, and the education of 
its youth, and to enable it to provide for the 
suitable sustentation and support of its crim- 
inal and pauper population.' . . . 

^^ There is, indeed, as Bishop Nulty says, 
a peculiar beauty in the clearness with which 
the wisdom and benevolence of Providence 
are revealed in this great social fact, the pro- 
vision made for the common needs of society 
in what economists call the law of rent. Of 
all the evidences that natural religion gives, 
it is this that most clearly shows the existence 
of a beneficent God and most conclusively 
silences the doubts that in our days lead so 
many to materialism. ' ' 

These enthusiastic sentiments of Bishop 
Nulty and Henry George, alas! are like the 
emotions called forth by the reading of a 
thrilling novel. They are based on fiction, 
not on truth and reality. There is no such 
^^vast public property," no such ** great na- 
tional fund" ! And there can be none ! For, 
as Leo XIII. in harmony with ancient and 
modern philosophy has so clearly demon- 
strated in his grand Encyclical which Henry 



THE SINGLE TAX 111 

George tried to refute by bold assertions and 
rhetorical phrases, the welfare of the indi- 
vidual, of the family, and of human society 
at large demands that temporal goods, land 
as well as movables, should be divided and 
owned severally. Hence God did not give 
the earth to the whole of mankind as their 
common property or the land of a country 
to the nation of that country as a whole, 
but He wished the earth to be divided, ^^ leav- 
ing the actual distribution of private posses- 
sions to men's industry and to the law of 
peoples.'' Such is human nature and such, 
therefore, are the designs of God's wisdom 
and benevolence. 

The beauty which Bishop Nulty and Henry 
George admire in the design of ^^ taking the 
rent of land for the community, " or of ^ ' rais- 
ing the public revenues by a single tax on the 
value of land irrespective of improvements, ' ' 
is no beauty at all, but an insult to justice. 
For what does the Single Tax practically 
mean! It means neither more nor less than 
this : all taxes are to be paid by those who 
own land; all others, even if they possess 
millions, go scot free. The injustice of such 
a system of taxation is so glaring that one 
must be blinded by prejudice or lack every 
notion of equity not to see it. Moreover, 



112 THE SINGLE TAX 

that the laying of all taxes on landowners 
would inevitably ruin agricnltnre and thus 
jeopardize the prosperity of nations, is so ob- 
vious an inference that the arbitrary and oft- 
repeated assertions of Henry George to the 
contrary can not in the least dim its evidence. 



VII. 

DR. EDWAED Mc GLYNN AND HENEY GEORGE 

Henry George had no greater admirer nor 
stanncher follower than Eev. Dr. Edward 
McGlynn. At the fnneral ceremonies which 
were held for Mr. George in Grand Central 
Palace, New York, October 30th, 1897, Dr. 
McGlynn made the following remarks : 

'^We stand upon ground that is made sa- 
cred by what remains of a man who was 
raised np by a peculiar providence of a 
Father in Heaven to deliver to men a mes- 
sage of truth, of righteousness, of justice, 
and of peace on earth. . . . This man 
was not merely a philosopher and a sage, 
but he was a seer, a prophet, a forerunner 
and preacher sent by God. . . . Why is 
this vast crowd here to-day and a vaster 
crowd seeking admission outside to honor the 
memory of Henry George? Why is it that 
vast multitudes have passed this coffin to- 
day? It is because there was a man sent of 
God, and his name was Henry George. And 
8 113 



114 DE. McGLYNN 

when God has sent such a messenger with 
such a message, the hearts of mankind are 
stirred to the depths. . . . That book 
[Progress and Poverty] is the work of a 
sage, of a seer, of a philosopher, of a poet. 
It is not merely political economy, it is not 
merely political philosophy, but it is a poem, 
a prophecy, a prayer. ' ' 

In a communication prepared for the press 
Dr. McGlynn said of his deceased friend: ''I 
believe that those gifts of his marked him 
out singularly as a man raised up by the 
providence of God to revise and to perfect 
the teachings of the ' fundamental political 
and economic verities that are absolutely es- 
sential to the preservation of the Eepublic 
and the healing of nations. I learned long 
since that Mr. George's was essentially a 
religious spirit. . . . He believed, and I 
believed with him, that the carrying out of 
his magnificent political philosophy and econ- 
omy would make practical the preamble of 
the Declaration of Independence and bring 
about justice and equality in this world and 
a better commonwealth and a truer Eepublic. 
. . . It was for these reasons that I gave 
heart and hand to Henry George in his work 
and that I took active part in his first won- 
derful mayoralty campaign [1886] and as 



AND HENEY GEORGE 115 

far as I could with propriety helped in the 
present one [1897]. I have made no secret of 
my sympathy, and I would have all those 
whom I could influence anywhere to know that 
the doctrines of Mr. George are in the fullest 
consonance with the teachings of the true re- 
ligion, with the essentials of that religion of 
the brotherhood of man under the fatherhood 
of God." 

It is not our intention to asperse the per- 
sonal character of Mr. George or to question 
the sincerity of his purpose to better the 
condition of his fellow-men. We are deal- 
ing exclusively with his economic system and 
teaching as contained in his published works. 
After having carefully examined his system 
in all its details and compared it with the 
principles of sound philosophy, and partic- 
ularly with the explicit and unmistakable 
teaching of the Encyclical '^Eerum Nova- 
rum," we are forced to characterize Henry 
George thus : If he was a poet, he was a poet 
of mere fiction ; if he was a prophet, he was a 
false prophet ; if he delivered to men a mes- 
sage, it was not one of truth and justice. His 
entire economic system is one huge error, 
conflicting alike with human reason, with ec- 
clesiastical teaching, and with divine revela- 
tion. It is Agrarian Socialism, but Socialism 



116 DE. McGLYNN 

in its proper meaning, undermining the very 
foundation of a well-ordered human existence 
and utterly destructive of the social order. 

The same verdict applies, of course, to Dr. 
McGrlynn's teaching, which, according to his 
words quoted above, is none other than that 
of Henry George. About this there can not 
be the least doubt. There exists a clear and 
explicit statement of his economic views, 
written by the Doctor himself, and, we are 
told, ' ^ approved by Henry George, in a letter 
to the New York Sun, as a correct exposition 
of his land theory." Undoubtedly, ^' Henry 
George was the best judge of a correct state- 
ment of his own principles." 

We might, therefore, dismiss said state- 
ment as containing nothing that we have not 
already met with and rejected in Mr. 
George's writings. But certain events con- 
nected with that document have caused in 
some minds such a confusion concerning the 
main issue, that there seems to be no hope 
of removing it until we understand clearly, 
on the merits of the statement itself, whether 
or not it is to be judged orthodox. About 
this, as about all other points, we would have' 
the reader judge for himself. We shall sub- 
mit to him the text of the statement without 
any omissions, interspersing only such re- 



AND HENEY GEORGE 117 

marks as will point out or summarize the real 
meaning of the Doctor or show the opposition 
of his tenets to the teachings of Leo XIII. 
The entire document fills one and a half col- 
umn in the Neiv York Freeman's Journal 
of February 6th, 1904. It will be sufficient 
for our purpose to quote the first half. It 
runs thus : 

^ ' All men are endowed by the law of nature 
with the right to life and to the pursuit of 
happiness, and therefore with the right to 
exert their energies upon those natural boun- 
ties without which labor or life is impossi- 
ble." 

The *' natural bounties" here spoken of, as 
we shall learn presently, are ^^the earth." 
The term is a favorite expression of Henry 
George and may almost be considered one 
of his technical terms. The second half of 
the sentence quoted is vague and obscure for 
the ** uninitiated" reader; the initiated will 
find in it the embryo from which the whole 
theory of common landownership is easily 
evolved. In the same manner Henry George 
succeeded in smuggling his theory into the 
fifth and sixth of the ^^ postulates" with 
which he begins his Open Letter to Pope Leo 
XIII. 

**God has granted those natural bounties, 



118 DR. McGLYNN 

that is to say, the earth, to mankind in gen- 
eral, so that no part of it has been assigned 
to any one in particular, and so that the 
limits of private possession have been left 
to be fixed by man's own industry and the 
laws of individual peoples.'' 

Leo XIII. writes: **Deus (enim) generi 
hominum donavisse terram in commune di- 
citur, . . . quia partem nullam cuique as- 
signavit possidendam, industriae hominum 
institutisque populorum permissa privatarum 
possessionum descriptione. " 

These two quotations resemble each other 
strikingly. Is the almost absolute identity 
of the two statements a mere chance? The 
wording is the same and yet, what Dr. Mc- 
Glynn asserts in his declaration is diametric- 
ally opposed to what Leo XIII. teaches in his 
Encyclical. The following will make this clear. 

*^God has granted the earth to mankind in 
general," says the Doctor. Here he affirms 
the common ownership of the earth by man- 
kind at large. This common ownership he 
designates a little farther on as the '^common 
right to natural bounties" or the ^'dominion 
over the natural bounties," and adds that 
^^the maintenance of this dominion over the 
natural bounties is a primary function and 
duty of the organized community." 



AND HENRY GEORGE 119 

The Doctor mentions also ^'the limits of 
private possession" (of portions of the land). 
What does lie mean by this *' private posses- 
sion ' ' 1 He means ^ ^ possession ' ' in the Geor- 
gian sense, as distinct from and exclusive 
of ownership, or property, i. e., mere ten- 
antcy. This is evident from the paragraphs 
immediately following, where he carefully 
distinguishes between ^^ private property and 
dominion in the fruits of industry or in what 
is produced by labor out of those natural 
bounties, ' ' on the one hand, and ^ ^ the use and 
undisturbed, permanent, exclusive private 
possession of portions of the natural boun- 
ties," on the other. *^Such exclusive posses- 
sion," we are told, ^4s necessary to the own- 
ership, use, and enjoyment by the individual 
of the fruits and products of his industry." 

Hence, according to Dr. McGlynn, there 
exist two kinds of private or individual 
right, viz., the right of ** possession," as dis- 
tinct from ownership, dominion or property, 
of portions of the land, and the right of 
*^ ownership," (dominion or property) in the 
fruits and products of one's industry. Over 
and above these two individual or private 
rights we have the common right of owner- 
ship (dominion) in the land itself, vested in 
the community as such. We need hardly 



120 DR. McGLYNN 

mention that with regard to one and the same 
object common and private ownership ex- 
clude each other. Hence the assertion of 
common landownership implies the negation 
of private landownership, just as the affirm- 
ation of private property in the fruits of in- 
dustry involves the negation of common own- 
ership in the same. Accordingly, Dr. Mc- 
Glynn's theory of ownership is embodied in 
these three assertions: (1.) the ownership 
in land is common, not private; (2.) there is, 
however, private possession, without owner- 
ship, of land; (3.) there is private ownership 
in the products of labor. 

After these explanations the reader will 
find no difficulty in grasping the precise and 
entire meaning of Dr. McGlynn's statement. 
We repeat the second sentence already 
quoted : 

^^God has granted those natural bounties, 
that is to say, the earth, to mankind in gen- 
eral, so that no part of it has been assigned 
to any one in particular, and so that the 
limits of private possession have been left 
to be fixed by man's own industry and the 
laws of individual peoples. 

'^But it is a necessary part of the liberty 
and dignity of man that man should own him- 
self — always, of course, with perfect subju- 



AND HENRY GEORGE 121 

gation to the moral law. Therefore, beside 
the common right to natural bounties, there 
must be by the law of nature private property 
and dominion in the fruits of industry or 
in what is produced by labor out of those 
natural bounties to which the individual may 
have legitimate access, that is, so far as he 
does not infringe the equal right of others 
or the common rights. 

^'It is a chief function of civil govern- 
ment to maintain equally sacred these two 
natural rights. 

**It is lawful and it is for the best interest 
of the individual and of the community, and 
necessary for civilization that there should be 
a division as to the use and an undisturbed, 
permanent, exclusive private possession of 
portions of the natural bounties, or of the 
land; in fact, such exclusive possession is 
necessary to the ownership, use, and enjoy- 
ment by the individual of the fruits and prod- 
ucts of his industry. 

^^But the organized community, through 
civil government, must always maintain the 
dominion over those natural bounties, as dis- 
tinct from the products of private industry 
and from that private possession of the land 
which is necessary for their enjoyment. The 
maintenance of this dominion over the nat- 



122 DE. McGLYNN 

ural bounties is a primary function and duty 
of the organized/ community, in order to main- 
tain the equal right of all men to labor for 
their living and for the pursuit of happiness, 
and therefore their equal right of access di- 
rectly or indirectly to natural bounties.'' 

Let us pause for a moment. Dr. McGlynn 
never tires of repeating the three natural 
rights which constitute his and Mr. George's 
theory of ownership, viz., common ownership 
in land, private possession, as distinct from 
ownership, of land, and private ownership 
in the fruits of labor. 

Leo XIII. rejects common landowner ship 
and affirms private ownership in land no less 
than ownership in the fruits of labor. It is 
his express purpose in the first part of the 
^^Rerum No varum" to maintain and defend 
the existence of private ownership, especially 
in land, by natural right. He always speaks 
of the same thing, real property, true owner- 
ship, which he designates in most varied and 
sometimes striking terms, such as ^^rerum 
dominium vel moventium vel solidarum" — 
^^possidere res privatim ut suas" — ^^bona 
stabili perpetuoque jure possidenda" — ^Her- 
rae dominatus" — ^^jus dominii personis sin- 
gularibus natura tributum." 

As regards the Latin '^possessiones" in 



AND HENEY GEOEGE 123 

particular, it is to be noted that throughout 
the Encyclical and in Latin authors generally 
this term means real property, especially 
landed property or real estate. It is entirely 
different from the term ^^ possession," as used 
by Henry George and Dr. iMcGlynn, in direct 
opposition to real property or ownership. 
Hence, if Dr. McGlynn, on the one hand, ad- 
mits ^^ private possession of the land" and 
speaks of ^^the limits of [such] private pos- 
session left to be fixed by man's own indus- 
try and the laws of individual peoples ' ' ; and 
if Leo XIIL, on the other, defends the law- 
fulness of ^* private (landed) possessions" 
and speaks of ^^the actual distribution of 
[such] private possessions left to men's own 
industry and to the laws of peoples," the 
meaning of the Doctor, as we said above, is 
diametrically opposed to that of the Pope. 
By that phrase Dr. McGlynn denies private 
ownership in land. By the same phrase Leo 
Xni. affirms it. He only repeats what he had 
more than once stated before in most explicit 
terms, such as these: ' ^ Consequitur, ut in 
homine esse non modo terrenorum fructuum, 
sed ipsius terrae dominatum oporteat. — 
Hence it must be possible for man to acquire 
as property not only the fruits of the earth, 
but the very soil itself. ' ' 



124 DE. McGLYNN 

Moreover, Dr. McGlynn maintains that 
God granted tlie earth as common property 
to mankind at large, and adds that ^ ' the main- 
tenance of this dominion over the natural 
bounties, as distinct from the products of 
private industry and from the (necessary) 
private possession of the land, is a primary 
function and duty of the organized commu- 
nity. ' ' Leo XIII. rejects common landowner- 
ship. This follows, first, from the fact that 
he teaches the justice and necessity of private 
landownership, the latter being incompatible 
with common landownership. Besides, he 
declares it directly by a clause which Dr. 
McGlynn omitted in his reproduction of the 
papal text. 

These are the words of the Pope (italics 
ours): ^'Quod vero terram Deus universo 
generi hominum utendam, fruendam dederit, 
id quidem non potest ullo pacto privatis 
possessionibus obesse. Deus enim generi 
hominum donavisse terram in commune 
dicitur, non quod ejus promiscinim apiid 
omnes dominatum voluerit, sed quia partem 
nullam cuique assignavit possidendam, indus- 
triae hominum institutisque populorum per- 
missa privatarum possessionum descrip- 
tione. ' ' 

This is the literal rendering of the text: 



AND HENRY GEORGE 125 

*'Tlie fact, furthermore, that God has given 
the earth for the use and enjoyment of the 
whole human race, does not in the least pre- 
vent the lawfulness of private possessions. 
For if it is said that God gave the earth to 
mankind in common, this is not to he under- 
stood as if He wished the common ownership 
of the earth vested in all men, but because He 
did not assign to any one the possession of 
any particular portion of the earth, leaving 
the actual distribution of private possessions 
to men's industry and to the laws of peo- 
ples." (Italics ours.) 

This is Dr. McGlynn's ^^ version" of the 
second sentence of the passage: ^'God has 
granted those natural bounties, that is to say, 
the earth, to mankind in general, so that no 
part of it has been assigned to any one in 
particular, and so that the limits of private 
possession have been left to be fixed by man's 
own industry and the laws of individual peo- 
ples." 

Here the essential and decisive clause of 
the Latin text, marked by us with italics, is 
altogether omitted ; besides, the combined ad- 
versative and causal conjunctions '^sed 
quia'' are replaced by a simple consecutive 
*'so that"; moreover, the Latin ablative ab- 
solute, which here is equivalent to an absolute 



126 DE. McGLYNN 

sentence, is likewise changed into a simple 
consecutive clause and added to the preceding 
one, '^and so that"; finally, the term ''priva- 
tarum possessionum/' which in the Encycli- 
cal means private property in land, is ren- 
dered by ^^ private possession" in the Georg- 
ian sense, excluding the right of property or 
ownership. By these subterfuges Dr. Mc- 
Glynn succeeded in manipulating what re- 
mained of the Pope's weighty utterance so 
as to make it convey a meaning directly op- 
posed to that which it has in the Encyclical. 
The Pope denies ^'the common ownership of 
the earth vested in all men"; Dr. McGlynn 
af&rms such common ownership and dominion 
of the earth. The Pope affirms real private 
property in land to be in harmony with the 
general destination of the earth for the ben- 
efit of the entire human race; Dr. McGlynn 
allows the individual nothing but the mere 
holding and use of land, without *' private 
property and dominion, ' ' which he restricts to 
^^the fruits of industry or what is produced 
by labor out of those natural bounties to 
which the individual may have legitimate 
access." 

So far we have examined the first part of 
Dr. McGlynn 's statement, in which he briefly 
expounds his theory of ownership. It is the 



AND HENRY GEOEGE 127 

Henry George doctrine : the denial of private 
and the assertion of common ownership in 
land. We now come to the second part of 
his statement. It contains the application of 
this theory of ownership, and treats of the 
land rent and the Single Tax. Here, too, 
the Doctor only repeats the ideas and tenets 
of Mr. George; some passages are taken al- 
most verbatim from the Open Letter to Leo 
XIII. Bearing in mind what we have said 
in our chapter on the Single Tax considered 
as a system of taxation, the reader will find 
it easy to follow Dr. McGlynn's exposition 
and to perceive the falsity of the whole sys- 
tem. 

**The assertion of this dominion [common 
landowner ship] by civil government is espe- 
cially necessary because, with the very be- 
ginning of civil government and with the 
growth of civilization, there comes to the 
natural bounties, or the land, a peculiar and 
an increasing value distinct from and irre- 
spective of the products of private industry 
existing therein. This value is not produced 
by the industry of the private possessor or 
proprietor [i. e., the so-called ^proprietor,' 
for the ^possessor' of land, according to the 
system, is but a tenant of the State or com- 
munity], but is produced by the existence of 



128 BE. McGLYNN 

the community and grows with the growth 
and civilization of the community. It is, 
therefore, called the miearned increment. 
It is this unearned increment that in cities 
gives to land without any improvements so 
great a value. This value represents and 
measures the advantages and opportunities 
produced by the community; and men, when 
not permitted to acquire the absolute domin- 
ion [i. e., ownership, as commonly under- 
stood] over such lands, will willingly [?] 
pay the value of this unearned increment in 
the form of rents ; just as men, when not per- 
mitted to own other men [!], will willingly 
pay wages for desired services. 

*^No sooner does the organized community, 
or State, arise than it needs revenues. This 
need for revenues is small at first while pop- 
ulation is sparse, industry rude, and the func- 
tions of the State few and simple; but with 
growth of population and advance of civiliza- 
tion the functions of the State increase, and 
larger revenues are needed. Grod is the au- 
thor of society, and has pre-ordained civili- 
zation. 

*^The increasing need for public revenues 
with social advance, being a natural God- 
ordained need, there must be a right way of 
raising them — some way that we can truly 



AND HENRY GEORGE 129 

say is the way intended by God. It is clear 
that this right way of raising public revenues 
must accord with the moral law or the law of 
justice. It must not conflict with individual 
rights, it must find its means in common 
rights and common duties. By a beautiful 
providence, that may be truly called divine, 
since it is founded upon the nature of things 
and the nature of man of which God is the 
creator, a fund constantly increasing with the 
capacities and needs of society, is produced 
by the very growth of society itself, namely, 
the rental value of the natural bounties of 
which society retains dominion. The justice 
and the duty of appropriating this fund to 
public uses is apparent in that it takes noth- 
ing from the private property of individuals 
except what they will pay willingly as an 
equivalent for a value produced by the com- 
munity and which they are permitted to en- 
joy. The fund thus created is clearly by the 
law of justice a public fund, not merely be- 
cause the value is a growth that comes to the 
natural bounties which God gave to the com- 
munity in the beginning, but also, and much 
more, because it is a value produced by the 
community itself, so that this rental value 
belongs to the community by that best of ti- 
tles, namely, producing, making or creating. 



130 DE. McGLYNN 

^^To permit any portion of this public 
property to go into private pockets, without 
a perfect equivalent being paid into the pub- 
lic treasury, would be an injustice to the com- 
munity. Therefore the whole rental fund 
should be appropriated to common or public 
uses.'^ 

This exposition of Dr. McGlynn sounds 
quite plausible. Nevertheless, besides some 
elementary truths, it contains grave errors. 
It is true that God is the author of society 
and that civilization is willed by Him. It is 
true that the State needs revenues to carry 
on its functions, and that there must be some 
way of raising these revenues in harmony 
with the moral order. It is also true that in 
society, or a civilized community, land has a 
value which it otherwise would not have. 

But it is a grave error to maintain that the 
revenues necessary for the proper govern- 
ment of a community must not be paid by 
the members of that community out of their 
own pockets ; or, rather, it is an absurdity to 
represent this mode of raising revenues as 
'^conflicting with individual rights" and as 
an 'infringement of the right of property." 
For what purpose has man received from the 
Creator the right of acquiring private prop- 
erty and for what purpose can and does he 



AND HENKY GEOEGE 131 

own what he has lawfully acquired? The 
immediate purpose is to have wherewith he 
may satisfy his personal wants and those of 
his family, as well as fulfill his various du- 
ties of justice or charity towards the com- 
munity to which he belongs. When Dr. Mc- 
Glynn was pastor at St. Stephen's, New York, 
the collection plate was on certain occasions 
passed round in the church. Now wherefrom 
did the pastor expect his parishioners to 
draw the contributions he hoped they would 
drop into the plate, if not from their own 
private resources ? When they put their dol- 
lars into the plate, they made precisely that 
use of them for which they had got them from 
the Almighty. 

It is, moreover, an error to maintain that 
the ^'peculiar and increasing value'' which 
the land has in a community, belongs to the 
State or community, and it is an illusion to 
speak of a common, constantly increasing 
fund which '^a beautiful providence" has 
provided for the raising of the necessary 
public revenues. 

What is the value of land in a community 
irrespective of improvements'? It is ^^a 
growth," answers Dr. McGlynn, *Hhat comes 
to the natural bounties," i. e., to the land. 
**The value of land," Henry George says, ^^is 



132 DR. McGLYNN 

the value that attaches to land by reason of 
increasing population and social progress. 
This is a value that always goes to the owner 
as owner." Hence it belongs not to the 
State, but to the individual who is the owner 
of the respective land. The '' dominion of 
the natural bounties, i. e., the earth," was 
never given by God to mankind at large nor 
the ownership of a particular country to the 
inhabitants of that country as a body. 

What is the land value ! It is ^ ^ a product, 
a creation of the community," answers Dr. 
[McGlynn with Mr. George, and therefore it 
belongs to the community by the best of all 
titles. This argument is a miserable sophism, 
mere quibbling upon the words ^'production" 
and '^ community" and, moreover, considers 
only one kind of wealth to the exclusion of 
all other kinds, to which it might be applied 
as well. 

The land value or exchange value of land 
arises indeed ''by reason of increasing popu- 
lation and social progress." It "represents 
and measures the advantages and opportuni- 
ties" which exist in the community. In 
primitive conditions, Henry George informs 
us, when the population of a country is sparse 
and much land unoccupied, no value attaches 
to land itself. 



AND HENKY GEOKGE 133 

As population increases and industry be- 
comes more varied and elaborate, value be- 
gins to attach to land and rises higher and 
higher, especially where population centers 
as in large cities. ^'Consider the enormous 
value of land in such cities as compared with 
the value of land in sparsely settled parts 
of the same countries. To what is this 
due? Is it not due to the density and ac- 
tivity of the populations of those cities — to 
the very causes that require great public ex- 
penditure for streets, drains, public build- 
ings, and all the many things needed for 
the health, convenience and safety of such 
great cities! See how with the growth of 
such cities the one thing that steadily in- 
creases in value is land; how the opening 
of roads, the building of railways, the mak- 
ing of any public improvement, adds to 
the value of land." {Open Letter.) 

The author of the Open Letter and his fol- 
lower. Dr. McGlynn, seem to imagine that 
every action that is done, and every work 
that is accomplished in a certain community 
or State is also an action and a work of that 
community or State. Has the State of New 
York built all the villages, towns, and cities 
within its borders, with all their houses, their 
roads, their railways, all their improvements 



134 DR. McGLYNN 

and conveniences, in a word with all those 
numberless factors which in one way or 
other have contributed to the rising of the 
land value in the various parts of the State of 
New York? Some buildings, some works, 
some means of material prosperity, etc., are 
due to public or State activity or to public 
funds ; but by far the greatest share in ' ' creat- 
ing ' ' the land values both in city and country 
within the limits of the State is undoubtedly 
to be assigned to private activity and to pri- 
vate enterprise of individuals or private cor- 
porations. Generally speaking we may safely 
maintain that only a very small proportion of 
the land value in a country is the ^'product" 
of the respective community or State. 

The argument quibbles upon the term ^^pro- 
ducing, making, creating.'' Making or pro- 
ducing, in the proper sense, when applied to 
material objects or things, means bringing 
them into existence by causing in a given 
material — for man can make naught out 
of nothing — a physical change to arise, in 
consequence of which the object now is 
what it was not before, say a chair, a 
statue, cultivated soil, roast beef. Such, 
and only such, ''producing" or ''labor" 
is acknowledged by all to be a legitimate 
title to the direct and proximate result, i. e., 



AND HENRY GEORGE 135 

the ^'product of one's labor," provided one 
works on material that belongs to him ; if one 
exerts his physical powers on material not 
his own, he can only claim a fair compensa- 
tion for the labor expended. In both cases 
the ''particular product of labor," with its 
entire usefulness or ''use value," belongs to 
the owner of the material. Should the owner 
grant or let the use of his property to some 
one else, he has the right to demand com- 
pensation for such use. But in this case, 
if the use of the object should afford to the 
user an opportunity of making some gain, 
e. g., by trading, this gain, whether great or 
small, would belong entirely to the user. 
Now this is precisely the manner in which 
roads, ships, railways, and all other advan- 
tageous arrangements or conditions, private 
as well as public, in a country or in several 
countries adjoining one another, cooperate to- 
wards increasing the exchange value of land 
in the various parts of the respective coun- 
try; viz., by affording opportunities for gain 
or comforts. The physical improvements 
and works themselves are the products of 
labor, but not their usefulness as such, much 
less the land values which are but a further 
consequence of such improvements. Hence 
the "rental value" of the land does not be- 



136 DR. McGLYNN 

long to the commniiity or State ^^by tliat best 
of titles, namely, producing, making or creat- 
ing." 

From the foregoing explanation the reader 
will easily understand that the argument of 
Henry George and Dr. McGlynn, if it proved 
anything with regard to landed property, 
would likewise hold as to all other kinds of 
property. The value of all material goods 
which are exchangeable, is affected, in one 
way or other, by those material conditions 
and features which distinguish a civilized and 
progressive country. Not only landowners, 
but also common laborers, business and pro- 
fessional men, in short, all classes of people 
are benefited by the various means of com- 
munication and social improvement. Hence 
their gains would likewise, at least in part, 
belong to the State. The argument evidently 
proves too much and consequently proves 
nothing. 

To conclude, therefore, the State or the 
community can not claim the land rent by any 
just title whatsoever; it being neither the 
owner of all the land in a country nor the 
'* producer" of the land value. The confisca- 
tion of the land rent by the State, as proposed 
by Mr. George and Dr. McGlynn, would there- 



AND HENKY GEORGE 137 

fore be sheer robbery, a downright infringe- 
ment of the citizens' right of property. 

We abstain from giving the rest of Dr. Mc- 
Glynn's statement, since nothing new could 
be learned from further quotations. Those 
who wish to read the Doctor's one-sided and 
superficial description of the working of the 
Single Tax system, together with his invec- 
tives against private landowner ship, which 
is represented as giving ^Hhe power to im- 
poverish and practically to reduce to a spe- 
cies of slavery the masses of men," are re- 
ferred to the columns of the New York Free- 
man's Journal, Feb. 6th, 1904; or, if they 
prefer, they may read Progress and Poverty 
or the Open Letter of Henry George, where 
they will find the same thoughts, not infre- 
quently expressed in the same words. 



VIII. 

THE TRUTH ABOUT DR. McGLYNN's RESTORATION 

To a communication to the press, part of 
which we quoted in the preceding chapter, Dr. 
McGlynn added these words- ^'I am par- 
ticularly happy to be able to say that I found 
more than abundant consolation for some 
tribulations which I have suffered because of 
Mr. George's doctrines in the fact that these 
tribulations brought out the explicit declara- 
tion from ecclesiastical authority that there 
was nothing in these doctrines contrary to 
the teachings of the Catholic religion." 

A communication from Eondout, N. Y., 
Jan. 16th, 1893, runs as follows: ^'When 
asked whether the action of Msgr. Satolli in 
reinstating Dr. McGlynn could be taken to 
mean that the Church itself advocated such 
views as Henry George and Dr. McGlynn 
held, Dr. Burtsell said: ... 'Dr. Mc- 
Glynn 's restoration through the mediation of 
Msgr. Satolli is a simple declaration from the 
Holy See that his views of landownership 
138 



DR. McGLYNN'S RESTORATION 139 

are permitted to be advocated by him, not 
being contrary to the laws of the Church. 
This, however, does not imply the conclusion 
that the Church itself advocates, or will ad- 
vocate, such ideas in regard to landowner- 
ship and the theory of a single tax, for she 
has never yet come to any such conclusion. 
There is a great difference between deciding 
a thing to be not contrary to the Church's 
teachings, and the Church's teaching such be- 
liefs herself. Dr. McGlynn's theories are 
now ^free doctrine.' People may adopt or 
reject his opinions as they see fit, without in- 
curring the displeasure or the rebuke of the 
Church through her officers.' " 

This communication is reprinted in the 
New York Freeman's Journal of Feb. 6th, 
1904. In the same issue we read at the end 
of an editorial note : ' ' The conclusion is that 
the Church has neither confirmed them [the 
principles of Henry George and Dr. Mc- 
Glynn] as true nor condemned them as false. 
This is the status of the Georgian Land The- 
ory at present. It is an open question; the 
Catholic is free to advocate or condemn it, 
but he is not free to adduce the authority of 
the Church as an argument against it, has no 
grounds to say that the Church condemned 
it." 



140 DR. McGLYNN'S EESTORATION 

It is the purpose of this chapter to show 
that the view of Dr. McGlynn's restoration 
expressed in the quotations just given, is un- 
tenable. What judgment on Dr. McGlynn's 
teaching did '^ecclesiastical authority," ''the 
Holy See, " or " the Church, ' ' give on the oc- 
casion of his reinstatement by the Apostolic 
Delegate, December 23rd, 1892? Let us re- 
view the facts connected with that event, as 
they were published at the time through the 
press. 

A despatch from Washington, dated Jan. 
14th, 1893, contained the following passage: 

"Msgr. Satolli authorizes the publication 
of the following statement in regard to the 
Pope's action in the case of Dr. McGlynn: — 
' On the very day of the reconciliation of Dr. 
McGlynn with the Church public notice was 
given of it with the statement that Msgr. 
Satolli had absolved from censure and recon- 
ciled Dr. McGlynn by special power for the 
purpose, requested from and granted by the 
Holy Father, and moreover, that the absolu- 
tion had been given because Dr. McGlynn had 
willingly accepted the conditions laid down 
by the Holy Father as necessary and suffi- 
cient.' " 

Further on the conditions of the reconcilia- 
tion were stated thus : ' ' The conditions were 



DE. McGLYNN'S RESTORATION 141 

in this form : Dr. McGlynn had presented a 
brief statement of his opinions on moral-eco- 
nomic matters, and it was judged not con- 
trary to the doctrine constantly taught by 
the Church and as recently confirmed by the 
Holy Father in the Encyclical ^Rerum Nova- 
rum.' Also it is hereby publicly made known 
that Dr. McGlynn, besides professing his ad- 
herence to all the doctrines and teachings of 
the Catholic Church, has expressed his re- 
gret (saying that he would be the first to re- 
gret it) for any word or act of his that may 
have seemed lacking in the respect due to 
ecclesiastical authority, and he thereby in- 
tends to repair, as far as he can, any offense 
which may have been given to Catholics. 
Finally, Dr. McGlynn has of his own free will 
declared and promised that, within the limits 
of a not long period of time, he will go to 
Rome in the spirit and intention which are 
becoming to a good Catholic and a priest." 
Note appended : ^ ' Dr. McGlynn says that he 
knows that the despatch from Washington 
containing a statement, the publication of 
which is said to be authorized by the Apos- 
tolic Delegate, is genuine and authentic, and 
that he will make the statement the subject 
of his talk at Cooper Union to-night. He 
will make an additional statement of his 



142 DE. McGLYNN'S EESTORATION 

own.'' {New York Herald, Jan. 15th, 1893.) 
At the meeting which was held at Cooper 
Union in the evening of Jan. 15th, 1893, Dr. 
McG-lynn read both the letter addressed by 
himself to the Apostolic Delegate and the 
above-mentioned ^ ' brief statement of his opin- 
ions on moral-economic matters." 

According to the World, Jan. 16th, 1893, 
Dr. McGlynn said : 

^^'Now that, as is made clear by the pub- 
lished statement of Archbishop Satolli, we 
are relieved from the restraint of certain 
considerations of prudence and delicacy, I am 
only too happy to publish the letter which I 
presented to the Apostolic Delegate, and his 
acceptance of which was immediately followed 
by the declaration of the removal of the ec- 
clesiastical censures, and by this publication 
to reaffirm the sentiments which it contains. 
The letter is as follows: ^Monsignor: I 
am very happy to learn that it has been 
judged that there is nothing contrary to Cath- 
olic doctrine in the doctrine taught by me, as 
it was explained by me in the exposition of 
the same which I sent to Your Grace, and I re- 
joice that you are prepared to remove the 
ecclesiastical censures. I assure you that I 
have never said, and I would never say, con- 
sciously a word contrary to the teachings 



DR. McGLYNN'S RESTORATION 143 

of the Church and the Apostolic See, to which 
teachings, and notably to those contained in 
the Encyclical Rernm Novarum, I give and 
have ever given a full adhesion, and if what- 
soever word may have ever escaped me which 
might seem not entirely conformable to those 
teachings, I would like to recall it or to in- 
terpret it in a sense conformable to them. I 
have not consciously failed in the respect due 
to the authority of the Holy See ; but if what- 
soever word may have ever escaped me not 
conformable to the respect due to it, I should 
be the first to regret it and to recall it. As 
to the journey to Rome, I will make it within 
three or four months if the matter be not 
otherwise determined by the Holy Father. 
I am Your Grace's very obedient servant, 
Edwaed McGtlynit.' " 

What do we learn from these documents 
concerning the question we propose to an- 
swer ? 

We learn the following facts : 

1. Msgr. Satolli reconciled Dr. McGlynn by 
special power granted by the Holy Father. 

2. Dr. McGlynn received absolution from 
ecclesiastical censures because he accepted the 
conditions laid down for him by the Holy 
Father as necessary and sufficient; viz.: 

3. Dr. McGlynn presented a statement of 



144 DR. McGLYNN'S RESTORATION 

Ms opinions and it was judged not contrary 
to the teaching of the Church and of the En- 
cyclical ^ ^ Rerum Novarum. ' ' 

4. Dr. McGrlynn professed his adherence to 
all the doctrines of the Church and expressed 
his regret for any word or act of his that 
might have seemed lacking in the respect dne 
to ecclesiastical authority. 

5. Dr. McGlynn promised to go to Rome 
in due time and in the proper spirit. 

From his statement made at the meeting 
of Jan. 15th, 1893, also quoted above, we 
learn the following facts : 

1. Dr. McGrlynn had presented a letter to 
the Apostolic Delegate, the acceptance of 
which was immediately followed by a dec- 
laration of the removal of the ecclesiastical 
censures. 

2. By the publication of this letter at the 
meeting, the Doctor wished to reaffirm the 
sentiments contained therein. 

3. He had learned with satisfaction that it 
had been judged that there was nothing con- 
trary to Catholic teaching in his doctrine, as 
explained in his exposition of the same. 

4. He assured the Apostolic Delegate that 
he had never consciously said a word con- 
trary to the Church's teaching, nor conscious- 
ly failed in the respect due to the Holy See. 



DR. McGLYNN'S RESTORATION 145 

5. The Doctor expressed liis full adhesion 
to the teachings of the Church and notably 
to those contained in the Encyclical ^'Rerum 
No varum. ' ' 

6. As to the journey to Rome he was will- 
ing to make it within three or four months. 

These are all the facts contained in the 
two documents. Where is there a decla- 
ration of ^^ecclesiastical authority,'' from 
^^the Holy See/' from ^^the Church"? 

The Washington despatch authorized by 
Msgr. Satolli sa^^s that ''the brief statement 
of the Doctor's opinions on moral-economic 
matters was judged not contrary to Catholic 
teaching." Dr. McGlynn himself writes in 
his letter to the Apostolic Delegate simply: 
''I am very happy to learn that it has been 
judged that there is nothing contrary," etc. 
''It was judged," — "it has been judged." — 
By whom? By the Apostolic Delegate? If 
this had been the case, the Washington des- 
patch, or, at least. Dr. McGlynn himself, 
would have mentioned it. The expression, 
' ' it was or has been judged, ' ' especially when 
compared with the phrase, "Msgr. Satolli 
had absolved from censure and reconciled 
Dr. McGrlynn"; and again, "I rejoice that 
you are prepared to remove the ecclesi- 
astical censures," rather indicates that the 

10 



146 DE. McGLYNN'S EESTOEATION 

^^ judgment" concerning Dr. McGlynn's doc- 
trine did not proceed from the Apostolic 
Delegate. 

Moreover, it wonld have been impossible 
for Msgr. Satolli to examine and decide the 
doctrinal part of the McGlynn case himself. 
He had bnt recently come to this country 
and was not yet sufficiently acquainted with 
its language to read the publications of 
Henry George or similar works. He had 
not followed the Henry George controversy, 
which had been carried on in this country 
for over ten years and which had excited 
the minds of Henry George's followers as 
well as of his opponents in a degree that 
can only be compared with the excitement 
caused by the Catholic school controversy 
which just at that time was in full blaze. 
Besides, the Apostolic Delegate was kept 
busy with many other intricate and annoy- 
ing affairs. In truth, he was not in a posi- 
tion to judge for himself of the doctrine ad- 
vocated by Dr. McGlynn, but was forced to 
consign this task to others. And this he did. 

In the New York Freeman's Journal, 
whose reliability in this matter admits of 
no doubt, we read (issue of Dec. 5th, 1903) : 

^^On the arrival of Archbishop Satolli in 
this country as the Pope's representative, 



DE. McGLYNN'S RESTORATION 147 

appeal was made to him to reverse the act 
of excommunication against Dr. McGlynn. 
He suggested that Dr. McGlynn should fully 
state and explain his doctrine on the land 
question. The Doctor presented to the Able- 
gate a direct and explicit statement of his 
teaching, just as he had been teaching it 
from the beginning. His presentation of 
the George land theory was submitted to 
and carefully considered by a committee of 
the professors of the Catholic University at 
Washington, who — with the Encyclical 
quoted by [our correspondent] before them 
— declared that it contained nothing contrary 
to the teachings of the Catholic Church. 
These professors were Revs. Thomas Bou- 
quillon, D. D. (Dean of the Theological Fac- 
ulty) ; Thomas 'Gorman, D. D. (now Bishop 
of Sioux Falls, S. D.) ; Thomas J. Shahan, 
D. D., and Charles Grannan, D. D. 

*^0n this decision Archbishop Satolli, in 
formal words, and in the name of the Pope, 
removed the ban of excommunication from 
Dr. McGlynn, and the first announcement of 
the Doctor's reinstatement was made by the 
papal representative from the Catholic Uni- 
versity at Washington. Previous to the re- 
moval of the ban Dr. McGlynn had expressly 
stipulated that he should be free to continue 



148 DE. McGLYNN'S EESTOEATION 

to expound the Single Tax as long as he 
thought proper." 

Again, in the same journal, for Jan. 23d, 
1904, we read: 

^^When [our correspondent] carries his 
interpretation so far as to say the Encyclical 
condemns the Single Tax doctrine, he comes 
in collision with the judgment and official 
decision of those learned professors to whom 
a statement of the doctrine was submitted 
by Msgr. Satolli, the Pope's representative. 
With the greatest regard for [his] ability 
and learning, we are constrained to prefer 
the official interpretation of those university 
professors which the Pope's representative 
received and acted upon, and on the basis of 
which he restored Dr. McGlynn to his ecclesi- 
astical status. 

^'Msgr. Satolli requested Dr. McGlynn to 
state the Single Tax doctrine which he ad- 
vocated. He complied, and his statement 
was submitted by Msgr. Satolli to the pro- 
fessors of the Catholic University at Wash- 
ington. Their decision was that they found 
nothing in the statement contrary to Catholic 
teaching. As they included the Encyclical 
as Catholic teaching, their decision was that 
there was nothing in the statement of Dr. 
McGlynn contrary to that papal document. 



DR. McGLYNN'S RESTOEATION 149 

This was accepted as final by the Papal Dele- 
gate, and Dr. McGlynn was restored without 
any retraction or repudiation on his part 
of the doctrine he had been advocating, 
and with the understanding that he could 
continue to advocate it. On the evening of 
the day on which he said his first Mass after 
his restoration, he gave a public lecture in 
which he advocated it.'' 

Finally, on Feb. 6th, 1904, the Freeman's 
Journal wrote under the heading, '^The 
Georgian Land Theory,'' as follows: 

^^In compliance with the suggestion [of 
a correspondent], we give elsewhere in this 
issue the two statements of the Georgian 
Land Theory as understood by Dr. McGlynn 
and Dr. Burtsell. These statements were 
approved by Henry George, in a letter to the 
New York Sun, as a correct exposition of his 
land theory. They were submitted to Msgr. 
Satolli and by him referred to a committee 
of professors of the Catholic University of 
Washington and declared by them to contain 
nothing contrary to Catholic teaching. 
After this decision was rendered the Papal 
Delegate removed the excommunication from 
Dr. McGlynn and restored his faculties." 

The Freeman's Journal adds: ''These 
facts, it seems to us, ought definitely to close 



150 DE. McGLYNN'S EESTOEATION 

the question. . . .'' Undoubtedly they 
ought to close it, and we venture to maintain 
that they do close it. For they make it evi- 
dent beyond even the possibility of a doubt, 
that the judgment which declared the land 
theory advocated by Dr. McGlynn to contain 
nothing contrary to Catholic teaching, was 
not a ^^declaration from ecclesiastical au- 
thority," but the opinion of the four pro- 
fessors who had been called upon to examine 
Dr. McGlynn 's statement. These learned 
professors acted merely as private theologi- 
ans. Their decision, therefore, carries no 
more authority than that which utterances of 
scholars generally carry. But after all, did 
their learning keep the four professors from 
making a wrong decision? Alas! it did not. 
Their decision is so manifestly erroneous 
that it has always been and is still a mystery 
how they could arrive at it. 

We have demonstrated, by a minute and 
accurate examination of the tenets of Henry 
George and Dr. McGlynn, that their doc- 
trine is substantially the same. We have 
demonstrated that their whole economic 
teaching is essentially embodied in the state- 
ment: there is no private, but only common 
ownership in land. We have, finally, demon- 



DR. McGLYNN'S EESTOEATION 151 

strated that this doctrine openly conflicts 
with natural reason, with the explicit teach- 
ing of Leo XIII., and with Holy Scripture. 
The opinion, therefore, of the professors who 
pronounced the Henry George-McGlynn 
Land Theory to contain nothing contrary 
to the teaching of the Church, has no value 
whatever. And in the reinstatement of Dr. 
McGlynn, as well as in the -events connected 
with it, there is nothing that could in truth 
be construed as a doctrinal decision or judg- 
ment from any ecclesiastical authority. The 
action of the Apostolic Delegate in the 
McGlynn case was of merely disciplinary 
character. 

Those who followed the events occurring 
soon after the arrival of Msgr. Satolli in 
this country, will remember what a surprise 
to the public was the news of Dr. McGlynn 's 
restoration, on December 23rd, 1892. Cath- 
olic writers and lecturers had stigmatized 
Henry George's theory of landownership as 
contrary to the teachings of the Church and 
of Holy Writ. Dr. McGlynn, who had made 
the Georgian tenets his own, had chiefly on 
that account come in conflict with his ecclesi- 
astical superiors. Nevertheless he was ab- 
solved from censure by Msgr. Satolli with- 



152 I)R. McGLYNN'S KESTOEATION 

out being requested to retract his former 
teaching. This was and remained for many 
an insoluble riddle. 

Previous to the removal of the excommuni- 
cation, as we have seen, Dr. McGlynn pre- 
sented to the Apostolic Delegate an ''explicit 
statement of his teaching, just as he had 
been teaching it from the beginning." This 
statement was examined by a committee of 
four professors of the Catholic University 
of America, who declared *'that it contained 
nothing contrary to the teachings of the 
Catholic Church." Accordingly, the Apos- 
tolic Delegate saw no reason why Dr. Mc- 
Glynn should be asked to recant his former 
teaching; on the contrary, he naturally 
rather pitied the Doctor, who had been for 
so many years to all appearances wrongly 
supposed to hold and propagate an erroneous 
and even heretical doctrine. This sufficiently 
explains the action of the Pope's representa- 
tive. 

However, the said supposition was not 
wrong, but the decision of the advisory com- 
mittee was wrong, and it was only because 
the Apostolic Delegate had been misled by 
that decision, that the restoration of Dr. 
McGlynn took place under such easy con- 



DE. McGLYNN'S EESTOEATION 153 

ditions and without any recantation of his 
former teaching. — 

The New International Encyclopcedia 
gives the following summary of Dr. Mc- 
Glynn's career: ^^He was born in New 
York, September 27th, 1837, of Irish parents. 
He was educated at the Propaganda in Eome, 
was ordained there, and in 1866 became 
pastor of Saint Stephen's Church in New 
York, but in 1886 was removed by the Arch- 
bishop, on account of his opposition to 
parochial schools, and especially because of 
his persistent advocacy of Henry George's 
Single Tax theories, which were declared at 
variance with Eoman Catholic teachings. 
He was soon after summoned to Eome to 
give an account of himself, but he refused 
to go. On the contrary, he boldly advocated 
in public the doctrine ^no politics from 
Eome.' In July, 1887, he was excommuni- 
cated. In December, 1892, after a hearing 
before the Apostolic Delegate, Msgr. Satolli, 
he made his submission and was restored to 
his priestly functions. He was in charge 
of a parish in Newburgh, N. Y., until his 
death, Jan. 7th, 1900. He aided in founding 
the Anti-Poverty Society, and became its 
president (1887)." 



154 DK McGLYNN'S EESTOEATION 

Dr. McGrlynn's absolution from ecclesias- 
tical censures at the hands of the Apostolic 
Delegate was, under the circumstances, a 
great humiliation for Archbishop Corrigan; 
for it made the steps which had been taken 
against the Doctor by his immediate ecclesi- 
astical superior appear before the whole 
world as arbitrary and unjust. Yet the 
saintly Archbishop never uttered a word of 
protest, but preferred to be silent, after the 
example of his Divine Master.^ 

1 The generosity of Msgr. Corrigan's conduct through- 
out " the McGlynn case " can be fully appreciated only 
by those who, like myself, have had access to the docu- 
ments left behind by the saintly Archbishop. Some day, 
no doubt, these documents, authentic copies of which I 
had the privilege of examining in the winter of 1904-5, 
will be published, and then only will the McGlynn case, 
in all its details, appear to the public in its true light. — 
A. P. 



IX. 

WHOSE IS THE UNEAKNED LAND VALUE? 

Those who claim the unearned land value 
for the community or the State advance one 
or both of these reasons: the land belongs 
to the community ; the land value is a product 
of the community. Both these assertions 
have been refuted in previous chapters. The 
second, however, being independent of, and 
apparently more plausible than, the first, 
may profitably be made the subject of a sep- 
arate inquiry. It is thus clearly proposed 
in an article of the Catholic Sentinel, Port- 
land, Ore., November 3rd, 1904: 

^^When the first comer settles on a claim 
in the midst of a vast wilderness, the land 
has no value whatever. It is of very little 
difference to him whether he settles a few 
miles farther east or west, provided that 
the bounties of nature are pretty evenly dis- 
tributed in the new region. But when the 
second settler comes, there is a decided ad- 
vantage in settling in the neighborhood of 
155 



156 THE UNEARNED LAND VALUE 

the original comer, for the reason that the 
two settlers will be able to help one another 
in their work. At this stage, the land which 
originally had no value, receives a slight 
value, due merely to the fact that a settle- 
ment has been begun. As time goes on, and 
the numbers in the community increase, a 
teacher is hired to instruct the children. A 
new family now moving into the wilderness 
would have a very strong motive inducing 
them to locate near the new settlement, 
rather than to move farther on in the wilder- 
ness. Then a church, a store, a blacksmith 
shop, police protection, and other accessories 
of a well-regulated community, are obtained. 
And these things and other similar causes 
combine to increase the value of the land. 
Now Henry George, and with him Dr. Mc- 
Glynn, proposed that this land value due 
to the presence of society, this ^unearned in- 
crement' of value, should be confiscated for 
the use of society.'' 

The argument contained in this passage, 
as we have already shown elsewhere, proves 
too much, — a clear sign that there is a 
radical flaw in it. When the first comer 
settles in a vast wilderness, the land has 
indeed no exchange value whatever. But the 
very same is the case with everything else the 



THE UNEARNED LAND VALUE 157 

settler may possess or raise or manufacture 
in that new region: huts, barns, horses, cat- 
tle, chickens, corn, potatoes, beans, shoes, 
clothes, implements, etc., etc. None of these 
objects has in the midst of a vast wilderness 
any exchange value whatever. Now let other 
settlers come into the same region, and not 
only the land, but all other property begins 
to have an exchange value, which will, within 
certain limits, increase as the community 
grows and advances. This value is ^^due to 
the presence of society" and is, if we deduct 
a fair compensation for the labor expended 
on those objects, an ^^ unearned increment of 
value," just as in the case of land. Ac- 
cordingly all this ^^ unearned increment of 
value" is to be ^^confiscated for the use of 
society." Thus, according to the principles 
of the Single Tax men, we have not taxation 
on one kind only of goods, i. e., land, but on 
all kinds ; we have not a ^ ^ single ' ' tax, but — 
mirabile dictu! — a universal tax! 

To escape this absurdity, one might say: 
There is a difference between things pro- 
duced by labor and things not so produced. 
The former we do not want to tax, but only 
the latter; the former belong to their owner 
with all the value that may eventually accrue 
to them; not so the latter. We ask: Why 



158 THE UNEAENED LAND VALUE 

do the former, but not the latter, belong to 
their respective owners with all the value 
that may eventually accrue to them? This 
discrimination is quite arbitrary. Between 
things produced by labor and things not so 
produced, there is, of course, this difference 
that on the former human labor has been 
expended to produce them, while no labor has 
been expended on the latter, except, perhaps, 
for their improvement. But what follows 
from such difference! This, that the por- 
tion of the value which corresponds to the 
amount of labor expended is rightly con- 
sidered as a compensation for that work or 
labor and is therefore earned by such labor; 
whilst the surplus of the value is not a com- 
pensation for labor and is therefore un- 
earned. Now in society, especially in mod- 
ern society with its manifold artificial means 
of production and communication, things 
produced have, as a rule, a much greater 
value than the mere equivalent of the labor 
expended on them. This surplus of value, 
therefore, is no less unearned by the pro- 
ducer than the value of a piece of unim- 
proved land is unearned by the landowner. 
In this regard there is absolutely no differ- 
ence between the two kinds of property. 



THE UNEAENED LAND VALUE 159 

Hence if the owner of things produced by 
labor may rightfully claim the ''unearned 
increment" of their value, so may the owner 
of landed property rightfully claim the ''un- 
earned increment'' of his land. The first- 
mentioned proprietor has no better title to the 
said ' ' unearned increment ' ' of value than the 
landowner has to the value of his land. 

Yes, he has a better title, replies Henry 
George; for having produced the objects in 
question he really owns them and conse- 
quently also that which flows from such 
ownership ; the landowner, on the other hand, 
has not the producer's title — the only title 
from which, in the last resort, springs the 
right of ownership. 

This answer would indeed remove the ab- 
surdity we have pointed out, but only by 
substituting another absurdity, viz., that 
labor (production) is the original title of 
ownership and that land, not being produced, 
can not really and truly be owned. 

The same reason is clothed by the Catholic 
Sentinel also in this form: "It seems to 
us that the real question is: Is it desirable, 
from the point of view of the general good, 
that John Smith, who owns a corner lot in 
a rapidly growing suburb, should be allowed 



160 THE UNEAENED LAND VALUE 

to pocket the rise in value of Ms lot, althougli 
he has not done anything personally towards 
causing the rise?" 

And, we may add, since the nnjnst is cer- 
tainly undesirable and the just desirable, 
the real question is ultimately: Is it just, 
from the standpoint of natural right, that 
John Smith, the owner of a corner lot, 
pockets the rise in the value of his lot, al- 
though he has not done anything towards 
causing the rise? This question, however, 
supposes in the mind of the enquirer a rather 
imperfect notion of lawful and unlawful 
^'pocketing." In order to pocket something 
lawfully it is not at all necessary that one 
should have done something personally to- 
wards its rise or origin; he may have some 
other title to claim it. A few examples will 
make this evident. 

The owner of a large vineyard, let us 
suppose, has had for several years such poor 
crops that he was barely compensated for 
his work. But after the years of scarcity 
follow very fruitful years. With the same 
amount of labor the wine-grower realizes 
now the threefold crop of former years. 
Evidently two-thirds of the increased re- 
turns are *^ unearned increment"; neverthe- 
less he pockets the profit with the same 



THE UNEARNED LAND VALUE 161 

quiet conscience with which he formerly took 
the poorer returns. A seamstress, working 
according to the old style, by hand, earned 
$1.50 a day, which was a fair compensation 
for her work and amply sufficient for her 
support. She purchased a sewing machine 
and now, with the same amount of labor, 
earns $3 a day. In less than two months 
the machine is paid for. Henceforth she 
receives every week $9 over and above the 
compensation for her personal labor, accord- 
ingly as pure gain, or, in technical parlance, 
as an unearned increment. Needless to say, 
she pockets the whole of her $18 every week 
without a scruple. More than that, every 
month she deposits the sum of $35 in a bank 
at 3% per cent, interest, and every year she 
draws the interest of her increasing capital, 
again without the least scruple, although she 
has done nothing personally towards causing 
this increase of her money. Now on what 
ground, we ask, will or can any one disturb 
the quiet conscience of that happy wine- 
grower or of that industrious seamstress? 
Was not all they pocketed their legitimate 
gain or income, although part of it was not 
due to their personal labor, was not earned by 
them, but was for them truly an ^^ unearned 

increment"? Evidently earning or labor is 
11 



162 THE FNEAENED LAND VALUE 

not the only lawful title to ownership, profit 
or gain. Hence John Smith may have a 
just claim to the increased value of his corner 
lot^ although he did not earn it. 

But has the land value which John Smith 
did not earn, perhaps been earned by the 
community? In the question whether or not 
the land value is earned by the community, 
this latter expression may stand either for 
the community in as much as it is one social 
body, or simply for the individuals who com- 
pose it. Li either case the question is to be 
answered in the negative. The importance 
and subtlety of this point demand a thorough 
and detailed examination. 

We have repeatedly used the term ^'un- 
earned'' without dwelling on its definition. 
Here it is necessary to analyze and ascertain 
its true meaning. What then does this term, 
taken in its proper and strict sense, mean? 
An alms which you give to a poor man is not 
earned by him; he receives it as a charity. 
A rich man who lives on his interest, does not 
live on his earnings; the property which 
yields him a sufficient income to live on, may 
have been earned by him previously; but he 
may also have received it as an inheritance 
from his parents, in which case it was not 
earned by him. The husbandman, however. 



THE UNEARNED LAND VALUE 163 

who lives on the produce of his farm, in as 
much as that produce is the result of his 
labor, lives on his earnings. Again the fair 
wages of a workman, the salary of a clerk 
or a teacher, are earned by them, because 
they are due compensation for work for 
which they have been engaged. 

It is plain that two conditions are essen- 
tially required in order that something may 
be said to be earned. First, it must be a 
remuneration for labor, i. e., for the exertion 
of one's powers. Earning and labor are 
correlative terms; one implies the other. 
Secondly, the remuneration must be one to 
which he who receives it is by justice entitled. 
Such is the case of the farmer who by dint 
of his own labor raises a crop on his farm; 
he can not be deprived of it by any one with- 
out injustice. Such is likewise the claim of 
the workingman, the clerk, the teacher, with 
regard to their wages or salary. A claim 
of justice is essential to constitute earning 
in the strict sense of the term. 

This claim of justice, may, however, arise 
in two ways, according as one works for 
himself, so to say as his own master, or for 
another by whom he is employed. He who 
works for himself and with his own means, 
can evidently claim as his own the product 



164 THE UNEAENED LAND VALUE 

of Ms labor. Thus the produce of an in- 
dependent farmer belongs to bim; the work 
of art produced by a painter or a sculptor 
belongs to the artist. No one can deprive 
them of the fruit of their labor without in- 
justice ; and if they exchange it for an equiv- 
alent amount of another kind of property, 
or for an equivalent sum of money, the price 
they receive is in justice theirs, it is earning 
in another form. If one works for another, 
i. e., if he hires his labor to another and for 
his benefit, a fair compensation for the work 
is to be agreed upon, and this agreement or 
contract constitutes in this case the claim of 
justice to the compensation when the work 
has been conscientiously done according to 
the agreement. Examples of this second 
kind are hired laborers, clerks, teachers, etc. 
Hence we arrive at the following definition: 
That, and that only, is earned, which belongs 
to one as a product of labor or as a compen- 
sation for labor. 

The exact meaning of the term being es- 
tablished, the question, — Is the land value 
earned by the community? can now be more 
clearly expressed thus : Does the land value 
belong to the community as a product of 
labor or as a compensation for labor? All 
agree that the exchange value of a statue 



THE UNEARNED LAND VALUE 165 

or a painting which has been produced by 
an ai"tist working independently, is to be 
considered as compensation for his work and 
is therefore earned by him. All agree like- 
wise that the increase in value which is due 
to the improvements made by the landowner 
himself is earned by him. But the question 
with which we are engaged at present refers 
to the value which land has, irrespective of 
improvements. Is this value earned? 

Let us call to mind what exchange value 
is and how it originates. The exchange 
value, as we have mentioned elsewhere, is the 
capacity of an object, which it has in society, 
of being exchanged (sold) for some other 
good. The correctness of this definition 
may be made evident by its application to 
any particular example, be it a movable good, 
a piano, a horse; or an immovable one, a 
field, a farm, a town lot. The exchange 
value arises proximately from the common 
judgment or estimation of men, remotely 
from various features of the salable object 
and from external circumstances or con- 
ditions on account of which people attach 
to objects such and such a value. The prin- 
cipal factor determining the exchange value 
is in all cases the usefulness or fitness of 
the object to satisfy the wants or desires 



166 THE UNEARNED LAND VALUE 

of men. But the cost of production or 
transportation and the abundance or scar- 
city of similar goods are likewise to be 
taken into consideration. Now in the case 
of landed property there can plainly be no 
question of cost of production or transpor- 
tation. Its value, therefore, will depend ex- 
clusively upon the usefulness, be it for agri- 
cultural or for business purposes, of the 
respective parcels of land, and on the 
greater or lesser difficulty of obtaining suit- 
able estates. How, then, does the value of 
land, irrespective of the qualities it possesses 
by nature, and of the improvements which 
are the result of the owner's labor, arise I 

Let us consider the settlement in the wil- 
derness, whose formation and development 
the writer in the Catholic Sentinel describes, 
after it has grown to be a town of about 500 
families. Land has now a considerable 
value, because it is much more advantageous 
to live in town than outside of, or at some 
distance from it. For there is ^^a decided 
advantage" in living near so many neigh- 
bors, who may assist you when you need 
help, who may provide you with almost any- 
thing you want in time of health or sick- 
ness, as the grocer, the baker, the tailor, 
the carpenter, the doctor, the druggist, etc.. 



THE UNEARNED LAND VALUE 167 

etc. On account of such and similar ad- 
vantages people attach to land in town a 
greater value than to the surrounding or 
more distant territory. 

Now do the inhabitants of the town 
^'create/' i. e. produce, for one another those 
practical or social advantages which make 
the land so valuable in the eyes of all! Cer- 
tainly they do, but how? They create them 
indirectly and incidentally with what they 
create directly and immediately. Take for 
instance the grocer, who builds his store in a 
certain place and keeps it stocked with all 
the kinds of groceries people may desire. 
The store with its provisions is the direct 
and immediate product of his labor or activ- 
ity, it is his creation in the strict economic 
sense, entailing the ownership of the prod- 
uct, viz., of the store with its provisions. But 
this same building with the groceries stored 
therein furnishes ipso facto to all the in- 
habitants of the place the opportunity or ad- 
vantage that they can buy there whatever 
they wish in the line of groceries. This is an 
indirect and incidental effect or consequence 
of our grocer's enterprising activity. The 
advantage thus indirectly and incidentally 
created for the people is indeed a real ad- 
vantage, and a considerable one. But is it 



168 THE UNEAENED LAND VALUE 

earned by the storekeeper? that is to say, 
does it belong to him as a product of his 
labor? which product, since it passes to 
others who are benefited by it, viz., the people 
of the town, demands on their part a cor- 
responding remuneration? Evidently no. 
"Who has ever heard that people were bound 
to compensation for the mere advantage of 
having a grocery store in their neighbor- 
hood? 

For the grocer, however, it is likewise a 
great advantage that so many families live 
near him. What would become of him and 
his store if there were no people in the place? 
Yet for this advantage, again, of having so 
many people living near him, the storekeeper 
owes them no compensation ; only when they 
come to buy from him is he bound in justice 
to give them whatever they want, provided 
he accepts from them the fair price he has 
fixed for his goods. The advantages, there- 
fore, which the grocer and the people create 
for one another are of such a nature as not 
to demand any compensation on either side; 
in other words, they are not earned. 

But suppose a compensation were due. 
Are these advantages not mutual and, eco- 
nomically considered, equal? Undoubtedly 
between the advantage, on the part of the 



THE UNEARNED LAND VALUE 169 

grocer, of having a chance to sell his goods, 
and that, on the part of the people, of having 
an opportunity to buy what they need, there 
is, from an economical standpoint, no differ- 
ence; for as long as buyer and seller deal 
fairly with one another, each will always re- 
ceive the equivalent of what he gives. Hence 
it follows that the compensation due on one 
side would, in our supposition, be balanced 
by that which is due on the other. Accord- 
ingly, in whatever way we may consider the 
economic or social advantage created by the 
grocer for the inhabitants of our prospering 
town, it is in no wise ^^ earned'^ by him. 

What has been said of the grocer, holds 
good of all the other inhabitants. Whatever 
material advantages may accrue to others 
from their presence and private enterprise, 
are produced indirectly and incidentally, and 
without claim to compensation; in other 
words, they are not earned. 

On the public improvements, i. e., those 
which are made by the community or town 
as such, e. g., public roads, public buildings, 
etc., and on the advantages arising from 
them, we need not enter. Public improve- 
ments are brought about and supported by 
common expense ; they belong to all and bene- 
fit all; besides their connection with the rise 



170 THE UNEAKOT]D LAND VALUE 

of. land values is the same as with that of 
private enterprises or improvements. 

However, in order to make our description 
of the origin of land values complete, let us 
consider how social advantages are produced 
by causes exterior to our imaginary town. 
Suppose a railroad line is built through it. 
At once the land values will begin to rise. 
Why ? Because of the new advantage of easy 
communication with other places, which helps 
business and traffic exceedingly. Can the 
railroad company claim from the town any 
compensation for the facility it offers of com- 
municating with distant towns and cities? 
No. The company owns the road which it 
has built, the direct product of its labor and 
expenses. Besides, when the road is actually 
used, the owners can claim the actual income 
from traffic and transportation. But for the 
facility, as such, of communicating with 
other places, no compensation is due to the 
company for the same reasons as we have 
set forth above. 

Accordingly, all the practical advantages 
which arise for the people from private and 
public improvements, and which increase the 
land values, are unearned by those who pro- 
duced the respective improvements. Can it 



THE UNEARNED LAND VALUE 171 

then be that the land values themselves are 
earned by them? 

Let us proceed to the last stage of our ar- 
gument. How do the social advantages 
which concur in raising the value of land pro- 
duce this effect? They do not act physically, 
like the rays of the sun which ripen the 
grapes, or like a mechanic who produces a 
tool. Their activity is of a totally different 
order; it is what is called by philosophers a 
moral activity, one exerted in and through 
the reflecting mind. For those practical ad- 
vantages are reasons on account of which the 
common estimation of men attaches to such 
or such parcels or sites of land such or such 
a value. The mind considers them as well as 
various features and circumstances of the 
land itself and thus after an equitable ap- 
preciation of all the objective reasons forms 
the judgment or decision by which the land 
value is finally determined. Such is the na- 
ture and the origin of that mysterious thing 
called exchange value. 

Now since the objective reasons which 
create the land value, produce their effect by 
an activity altogether different from that 
which we call labor, the land value in itself 
is not a product of labor and consequently is 



172 THE UNEARNED LAND VALUE 

not earned directly. The same holds of ex- 
change values generally. They neither have 
in themselves any physical reality which is 
produced by labor, nor do they originate 
from their remote causes in any other way 
except by the appreciation of the mind. 
Hence they can never be earned in them- 
selves or directly. They may, however, be 
earned indirectly or mediately, i. e., in as 
much as the causes from which they arise 
are earned. Thus the value of a statue or a 
painting is earned by the artist, because the 
artistic perfection of the work which gives 
it its value, is the product of his labor. For 
the same reason the increase in value which 
is due to improvements made by the land- 
owner, is earned by him, viz. indirectly. But 
we are now dealing only with the value which 
land has on account of exterior social ad- 
vantages. These advantages, as we have 
demonstrated, are unearned and conse- 
quently the rise in value of land caused by 
them is not even earned indirectly. This land 
value, therefore, is ahsohitely unearned. It 
may be called, in a general sense, a product 
or creation of society, to signify that it 
springs through the estimation of men from 
practical advantages found only in society; 
but it can not be called so in the economic 



THE UNEAENED LAND VALUE 173 

sense of the term. The land value, irrespec- 
tive of improvements, is strictly and abso- 
lutely an unearned increment. 

We are now prepared definitely to answer 
the query, To whom does the land value, this 
^^ unearned increment," belong and by what 
title? According to the principles laid down 
so far the answer can not be doubtful. The 
exchange value of an object, as we have seen, 
is the possibility of obtaining by exchange 
an equivalent amount of other goods; in 
other words, it is the usefulness of the object 
considered as a means of exchange. Now 
who can claim this usefulness ? Evidently no 
one except the owner of the object. The 
owner and he alone has in virtue of his right 
of ownership the legitimate and inviolable 
power of disposing of his property for his 
own benefit, and that in any manner what- 
ever, so long as he does not violate the rights 
of others or a just law prohibiting such or 
such a particular use of his right. The 
owner may keep his property for himself or 
give it away as a free donation ; he may lease 
it to others for a certain amount of yearly 
rent ; he may also, if he pleases, give it away 
on condition of receiving for it its equiv- 
alent according to common estimation — a 
transaction which we call sellins:. If he sells 



174 THE UNEAENED LAND VALUE 

his property, his ownership in what he sells 
ceases, but in its stead he receives its equiv- 
alent, i. e., becomes the owner of the price. 

Now in selling his property and pocketing 
a fair price for it, does the seller violate any 
jnst law or other people's rights? The law 
forbids the act of selling only in special cir- 
cumstances, e. g., if the owner is under age. 
Generally speaking, a proprietor is not for- 
bidden by law to sell his property. Besides, 
the seller does not wrong the buyer, because 
the latter receives the equivalent of the price 
he pays and consents to the bargain freely. 
Finally, no one else is in any way wronged, 
because no one else owns the property in 
question or has a claim to its value or any 
part of it. Hence the transaction is entirely 
legitimate. By selling his property the seller 
becomes the rightful owner of the whole price 
which he receives, just as the buyer becomes 
the rightful owner of the whole property 
which he buys. Claiming the price for any 
one else than the owner of the salable object, 
would evidently be to deny his right of 
ownership. But the claim to the price in case 
of an exchange, and the claim to the ex- 
change value of an object, are one and the 
same thing. Consequently, to deny the owner 
the claim to the value of his property, is in 



THE UNEARNED LAND VALUE 175 

fact a denial of his riglit of ownership. By 
its very nature, therefore, the value belongs 
to the owner of the valuable object and the 
right of ownership essentially includes the 
legitimate claim to the value of the object 
owned, no matter what that object is, chattel 
or land. 

From the foregoing the reader will easily 
understand that our doctrine is but an ap- 
plication of the principle: ^'Res fructificat 
domino." The exchange value as such is 
a product or fruit which property yields 
under certain favorable conditions of society. 
It is a civil or social fruit. Outside of so- 
ciety property would be useful only within a 
very limited sphere; in society it becomes, 
besides, under favorable circumstances, ex- 
changeable for other useful goods. This new 
advantageous feature of property, with all 
the benefit to be derived from it, belongs to 
the owner of the object for the same reason 
that its other useful qualities and its natural 
fruitfulness belong to him. The owner of a 
thing owns the real thing and the whole thing 
as it is; he owns it, therefore, with all its 
fitness for immediate practical purposes and 
with all its fruitfulness, if it is capable of 
bearing fruit, be it physically or civilly. 

*^Ees fructificat domino" is a self-evident 



176 THE UNEAKNED LAND VALUE 

principle and is constantly applied by every 
one without the slightest misgiving. If the 
owner of a vineyard is blessed with a crop 
that not only compensates his labor, bnt 
leaves him double the amount as pnre gain, 
one- third of the produce goes to him as ^ la- 
borer," being the fruit of his labor, the re- 
mainder goes to him merely as landowner, 
being the f rnit of his vineyard ; the former is 
an industrial, the latter a natural fruit. The 
seamstress of whom we spoke on a previous 
page, who earns $3 a day with her machine, 
pockets indeed the whole amount; but only 
half of it is her personal earning; the other 
half is the industrial fruit of her machine, 
just as the interest which she draws from the 
bank is the civil fruit of her deposit. The 
*^ fruit'' of her machine, however, and of her 
money, is no less hers than the sum which 
corresponds to her personal daily work, be- 
cause ^*res fructificat domino." 

Upon this principle rests whatever income 
a proprietor may legitimately claim as pro- 
prietor, independently of his personal labor 
or activity; for what corresponds to the lat- 
ter, is due to him as the fruit of his labor and 
is an earned increment. If in a lucrative 
business one and the same person does the 
work and owns the capital put into the busi- 



THE UNEARNED LAND VALUE 177 

ness, he can claim the entire profit, which is 
partly earned, partly unearned. If, on the 
other hand, one furnishes the work, and an- 
other the capital, the profit will have to be 
divided between the two partners according 
to a fair proportion agreed upon before- 
hand; the share of the former is due to him 
as compensation for his labor, whilst the 
claim of the latter is that of a proprietor to 
the fruit of his capital. 

In an advanced stage of social progress 
almost any kind of property may be made 
productive or fruitful. Not only labor, but 
also land and capital are rich sources of 
wealth, nor can any one of them be dispensed 
with. Of the three, land is undoubtedly the 
most important, no matter whether we con- 
sider its abundance of hidden treasures and 
its fertility, by which it is, as Leo XIIL says, 
^'a never failing store-house for man's ever- 
recurring needs," or look upon it as the 
dwelling-place wherein men may live and 
build their houses, work-shops, stores or 
offices. In both respects land is the basis of 
the two other sources of wealth. It is, there- 
fore, of paramount importance, nay of im- 
perative necessity for the welfare of society 
not to abolish, but to maintain intact the right 
of landownership as the author of nature 
and of society has established it. 

12 



THE FUNDAMENTAL FALLACY OF AGEAKIANISM, 
SOCLLLISM, AND COMMUNISM 

In his Open Letter Henry George strongly 
resented that Leo XIII. had classed the Sin- 
gle Tax men as Socialists; he moreover ac- 
cused the Pope of having confounded So- 
cialism with Communism. 

What is Socialism? Socialism is a special 
form of Communism, as Agrarianism is a 
special form of Socialism. 

Every system that attacks private owner- 
ship and substitutes in its place common 
ownership is in the proper sense of the word 
Communistic. Communism, however, may be 
more or less comprehensive and radical, ac- 
cording as the denial of private ownership 
extends to one or several or all of the great 
classes of material goods that are at present 
and always have been held in severalty. 
Extreme Communism denies the private own- 
ership of all classes of objects and advocates 
the transfer of all goods without exception 
to the community as owner and administrator. 
178 



THE FUNDAMENTAL FALLACY 179 

Moderate Communism "advocates only the 
abolition of private property as far as capi- 
tal, or the materials of labor, or productive 
goods in contradistinction to non-productive 
goods, is concerned. By productive goods 
are meant real estate, all kinds of raw ma- 
terial, factories, machines, tools, means of 
transportation, in fine, everything not in- 
tended for immediate consumption. . . . 
This moderate form of positive Communism 
is at present the only one which has adher- 
ents. They are divided into two large 
groups, bitterly hostile to each other: An- 
archism and Socialism. 

^^ Anarchism (Anarchist Communism) de- 
mands the transfer of productive property 
to independent groups of worhingmen (com- 
munities). . . . Socialistic Communism j 
or simply Socialism, advocates the transfor- 
mation of all capital, or means of production, 
into the common property of society, or of 
the State, and the administration of the prod- 
uce and the distribution of the proceeds by 
the State. Since modern Socialists, and 
chiefly the followers of Karl Marx, intend to 
realize this scheme upon a purely democratic 
basis, they call themselves Social Democrats, 
and their system Social Democracy/' '^ The 

1 Cathrein-Gettelmann, Socialism, pp. 14 sqq. 



180 THE FUNDAMENTAL FALLACY 

transformation of all the means of produc- 
tion into the common property of the State 
or commonwealth, is the final aim and the 
substance of Socialism strictly so called, in 
which all Socialist platforms both in Europe 
and America agree. ^ Their other and more 
immediate demands, in which there are many 
differences, are, as it were, only steps and 
means to accomplish that end. — Agrarian So- 
cialism, finally, denies private and advocates 
common ownership in land only. 

All these systems have one and the same 
principle in common, viz., common or col- 
lective ownership; they differ only in its ap- 
plication. Whether they are called Com- 
munism or Socialism is immaterial, these 
terms properly meaning the same thing, just 
as the words ^* community" and ^'society." ^ 
In their strict sense, however, the terms have 
come to signify the special systems as enu- 
merated and described above. 

In his Encyclical ^^Eerum Novarum" Leo 
XIII. does not enter upon any classification 
or enumeration of the various Communistic 
forms, which he supposes to be sufficiently 
known; nor does he mention any of their de- 

1 Ibid. pp. 56 sqq. 

2 Cf. Institutiones Juris 'Naturalis, by Theodore Meyer, 
S.J., Pars II., nn. 137-140. 



THE FUNDAMENTAL FALLACY 181 

mands except that which is common to all 
systems and is the basis of all other demands, 
viz., common landownership. Using the 
term Socialism and Socialist in a broader 
sense, he attacks all Communistic forms at 
once and refutes them all by disproving the 
one essential and fundamental tenet in which 
they agree. This was a veritable master- 
stroke of the great Pontiff. The foundation 
of a building being destroyed, the stories 
erected upon it tumble by themselves. Such 
is Leo's refutation of Socialism and Commu- 
nism. Apparently he deals only with Agra- 
rianism, but by refuting it he eo ipso refutes 
all economic systems destructive of society. 

In fact, between Agrarian Socialism and 
the other Communistic forms there is no es- 
sential difference; the difference lies merely 
in a greater or less degree of consistency, 
the least consistent being Agrarianism, the 
most consistent, extreme or absolute Com- 
munism. A supporter of common landown- 
ership cannot consistently fall short of advo- 
cating Anarchism or Socialism strictly so 
called, nay, even extreme Communism. 

^*A Socialist, therefore," writes Cathrein, 
^^ might well take a leaf out of Mr. George's 
book. Not only as regards the soil, but also 



182 THE FUNDAMENTAL FALLACY 

with respect to all other things owing part of 
their value to nature (and to these how few 
are the exceptions?), he might emphatically 
exclaim : ^ Is not labor the only source of ac- 
quiring! Does nature discriminate, and des- 
tine her prizes for one man rather than for 
another!' This principle, then, of Mr. 
George's (viz., that labor is the only source 
and title of ownership) avails him nothing, 
unless he is prepared to throw himself into 
the arms of radical Socialism. ' ' ^ And 
again: ^'Therefore we justly conclude that 
private property in land has the very same 
natural basis as private property in general. 
He who cries out against individual property 
in land as unjust, must necessarily raise his 
voice against all private property, and hence 
openly and frankly profess downright Social- 
ism. ' ' ^ 

Let us examine in detail how from the 
common ownership of land follow all the 
principal demands of Socialism. Can an 
Agrarian Socialist, without contradicting 
himself, admit private ownership in raw ma- 
terials! He cannot. All raw materials be- 
long to the natural bounties; they are prod- 
ucts of nature, not of man. Accordingly, 

1 The Champions of Agrarian Socialism, pp. 112 sqq. 

2 Ibid. p. 119. 



THE FUNDAMENTAL FALLACY 183 

they are positively owned by all men in com- 
mon; were any one to appropriate a portion 
of them for himself to the exclusion of all 
others, he would rob mankind of its own. — 
Do not say, raw material must often be taken 
out of the bosom of the earth as a fish must 
be taken out of the river or lake to be en- 
joyed at a meal, and this taking out fre- 
quently implies great labor and expense. 
Taking is not making; what is to be taken 
by man, must first have been made by nature, 
i. e., the Creator; and what nature or God 
has made, is the common property of all and 
no one^s exclusive property! — Neither can 
what nature has given to all be turned by any 
one's efforts or exertions, however laborious 
and expensive, into his private and exclusive 
property. For such a change would involve 
the destruction of the common ownership in 
that particular object, since common and in- 
dividual ownership in the same thing are in- 
compatible. But a natural right of owner- 
ship vested in all mankind cannot be de- 
stroyed or cancelled by a particular action, 
however laborious, of one or several indi- 
viduals. If this were feasible, why should 
not a burglar who with great labor and skill 
succeeds in taking public money out of the 
city treasurer's vaults, be empowered to 



184 THE FUNDAMENTAL FALLACY 

turn the common property of the city into 
his private property? 

But the Agrarian Socialist mnst go far- 
ther and surrender to the commnnity also 
the artificial means of production. We say 
the artificial means ; because means which are 
merely natural, e. g., the flowing or falling 
water of a river, belong to the bounties of 
nature which are common to all. The arti- 
ficial means are produced by human labor, 
as machines, mills, etc., and are either the 
product of the community as such or that of 
one or several individuals. It is self-evident 
that they are and remain common property 
in the former case; and that they are so in 
the latter, we shall now explain. 

Whatever particular means of production 
we may consider, e. g., a machine, it consists 
of material which, through the labor and 
skill of those working on it, received its pres- 
ent form and composition. That material, 
however, was once raw material and as such 
naturally the common property of all. But 
no private activity of individuals, as we have 
seen, can destroy the natural right of owner- 
ship vested in mankind. The material, there- 
fore, or the substance, as we may call it, of 
every machine, even when completed, remains 
what it was by nature, the common property 



THE FUNDAMENTAL FALLACY 185 

of all. Now the natural common ownership 
in the substance of the machine prevents the 
acquisition of any private ownership in the 
accidental form produced by labor. 

For the natural common right is mani- 
festly prior and superior to any supervening 
individual claim and must therefore prevail 
in a case of colliding rights or claims. Such 
a case we have before us : the ownership in 
the substance, on the one hand, is useless 
without the ownership in the accidental form, 
and vice versa; on the other, it is impos- 
sible that the machine be, at the same time, 
the actual property of mankind and the ex- 
clusive property of one or several indi- 
viduals. Whose claim, therefore, must, in 
the objective order of justice, yield and 
whose will prevail? The inferior must yield 
and the superior will prevail; or, as Henry 
George correctly and forcibly puts it, ^^The 
individual right is lost in the common right. 
It is the greater that swallows up the less, 
not the less that swallows up the greater." 

Consequently, the community which owns 
the material will also own the form as it 
arises through the labor of the ^^ producer;" 
and when the machine is finished, it is the 
property of the community, not of the ^* pro- 
ducer." Had the latter worked on material 



186 THE FUNDAMENTAL FALLACY 

that was Ms own, or at least ownerless, both 
the substance and the form, that is, the whole 
machine wonld be his ; but he worked on ma- 
terial owned by the community and there- 
fore the community, as owner of the mate- 
rial or substance, becomes also the owner 
of the new accidental form. The "pro- 
ducer," indeed, has a claim upon the com- 
munity which he has benefited for a com- 
pensation for his labor; but in the machine 
itself he has no claim of oivnership except 
that which everyone has in the common prop- 
erty of all. 

The case of a machine is, in the supposi- 
tion of common landownership, exactly the 
same as that of a cultivated field. Take an 
agriculturist who, by expending labor, im- 
proves a piece of land. What right does he 
acquire according to the theory of common 
landownership ? 

He acquires indeed the right to gather the 
fruits of his labor, that is, a portion of the 
produce of the field, but he does not and can 
not acquire the ownership of the field; and 
even if he continues to lavish labor upon 
it, he does not acquire its ownership. The 
field was before, and always remains, the 
property of all, and any one who wishes to 
cultivate and use it, has the right to do so 



THE FUNDAMENTAL FALLACY 187 

in his turn, just as our agriculturist did so 
far. If some labor of his has not yet been 
adequately compensated, he may eventually 
claim what is owing to him, but he can not 
permanently exclude others from cultivating 
and using the same field if they wish to do so ; 
for to exclude them would be to deprive 
them of their natural right to the bounties of 
nature, which are their real property as well 
as that of all others.^ 

In the same way, whatever is natural in 
the machine, is and always remains the com- 
mon property of all; the artificial improve- 
ment or accidental form which results from 

1 In the same manner Cathrein argues in the following 
passage: " It would be vain to object against Mr. George's 
argument, that the agriculturist expends labor and capital 
on his farm, and that there may occur many cases in which 
it can scarcely be decided how much of the value of an es- 
tate is due to labor and capital. From this it would only 
follow that the farmer has the right to gather the fruits 
of his labor, but not that he has the right of permanently 
excluding all others from the use of the same land. 

" Perhaps one might urge that the proprietor, continuing 
to expend new labor on his field, will ever continue to be 
entitled to exclude others from its simultaneous use in 
order that he may get the fruits of his labor. 

"We reply: If labor is the only title of ownership, 
whence does the landowner derive his right to exclude 
others permanently from his estate, supposing that they 
also wish to cultivate tliis same piece of ground, especially 
if no other land is to be had. He may have a right to 
compensation for the labor already expended; but the right 
of excluding others permanently from the advantages which 
the soil offers as the previous condition and basis of labor, 
cannot be derived from the sole right to the produce of 
labor." {The Champions of Agrarian Socialism, pp. 100 
sqq.) 



188 THE FUNDAMENTAL FALLACY 

labor could be claimed by the producer, if it 
were something by itself, or if the substance 
or material were his own or, at least, some- 
thing without an owner. But the accidental 
form is naturally inherent in, and physically 
identical with, the substance and must there- 
fore go to the owner of the substance, the 
community. The producer has a right to a 
compensation for his labor; to its product, 
that is the machine, he has no claim. Thus 
it is that the principle of common land- 
ownership leads necessarily to the common 
ownership of all the means of production 
resulting from labor. 

The same reasoning applies also to those 
things which, while produced by labor, are 
not destined for production. For whether 
or not an object is intended and used for pro- 
duction, is a circumstance which makes no 
difference whatever as regards the owner- 
ship of the object ; whatever is made by labor 
out of material which is positively owned by 
mankind, remains the property of mankind. 
Hence our final conclusion is, that common 
landownership makes all private ownership 
whatsoever impossible. Advocates of com- 
mon landownership, therefore, can not reject, 
but must endorse the further demands of 
Anarchism or Socialism proper, and they as 



THE FUNDAMENTAL FALLACY 189 

well as Anarchists and Socialists must join 
hands with the extreme Communists. From 
the standpoint of natural justice, Agrarian- 
ism is the real basis of Anarchism, Socialism, 
and Communism. Hence, when Leo XIII. in 
his great Encyclical ^'Rerum Novarum" pro- 
posed to himself the task of refuting all these 
pernicious systems, he could not have found 
a shorter and more direct way of accomplish- 
ing it than the one chosen by him. As from 
common landownership follows the common 
ownership of all raw materials, of all means 
of production, and of all products of labor, 
so from the necessity and lawfulness of pri- 
vate landownership follows the necessity and 
lawfulness of private ownership in the means 
of production as well as in the products of na- 
ture and of labor: and all this in virtue of 
the right order instituted by the Creator as 
the natural law. Justly could the Pontiff, 
therefore, conclude the first part of his mem- 
orable Encyclical with this weighty pro- 
nouncement: '^The first and most funda- 
mental principle, accordingly, if we wish to 
alleviate the miserable condition of the 
masses, must he the inviolability of private 
property." 

This is the only solid groundwork upon 
which real and truly beneficial reforms can 



190 THE FUNDAMENTAL FALLACY 

be built. Let all those, therefore, who have 
the welfare of society at heart, ground them- 
selves on this unshakable foundation. And 
let especially the working classes, whose con- 
dition demands a speedy and sure remedy, 
turn away from all who, by their erroneous 
principles, sap the very basis of a peaceful 
and prosperous existence, whilst by their spe- 
cious promises they deceive the masses, fos- 
ter discontent, and increase misery. If some 
of their immediate proposals seem to meet 
real grievances, they are neither peculiar to 
their systems nor at all connected with their 
fundamental tenets and ultimate aims. Only 
on the basis of right thinking and justice can 
practical measures be devised and applied 
which will truly and permanently promote 
the welfare of society. 

Leo XIII. was not satisfied with pointing 
out the true principles of social reform; in 
the second part of his Encyclical he also in- 
dicated practical ways and means for a so- 
lution of the social problem. From the ele- 
vated position of his Apostolic See he has 
mapped out a magnificent programme for 
Church and State, for employers and em- 
ployees, instructing them how to accomplish 
the desired result by harmonious co-opera- 
tion. Let all Christians study and weigh his 



THE FUNDAMENTAL FALLACY 191 

Encyclical letter ''On the Condition of La- 
bor'' and heed the voice of one whose mem- 
ory is deservedly honored by a monument 
bearing the inscription : 

''lEO XIII., THE WOEKINGMEN's FKIEND. 



The End. 



JUl 2 1908 



